Kai s Power Tools

Kai's Power Tools

Kai Krause is a legend in the field of computer graphics. He's the guiding genius behind Kai's Power Tools (KPT), Bryce, Convolver, Vector Effects, Final Effects, Goo, Soap, and probably many more goodies yet to be announced. The KPT 5 and 6 plug-in sets have been available for several years , although the parent company, MetaCreations, sold them to Corel Corp. Corel is now selling the KPT Collection, which includes "all the powerful Kai's Power Tools plug-in filters of KPT 5, KPT 6, and KPT effects."

The interfaces are designed to be as intuitive and as interesting as possible (see Figure 19.7). There are excellent help screens available within each filter (look for a question mark and click it). The goal of these filters, in addition to allowing you to do interesting things to your photos, is to change your way of working with the computer.

Figure 19.7. The interface for the KPT tool collection.

When you open any of the KPT filters, your screen will go blank except for the KPT logo. Then it will open with a futuristic control panel. Within the panel are smaller panels that control individual actions as parts of the filters' functions. For example, in Figure 19.7, when you slide the mouse over the panels or click a triangle, other panels drop down. The Equalizer filter enables you to selectively sharpen, smooth, or blur parts of a photo without affecting the rest. Clicking the question mark opens the PDF user guide for the selected filter. The button in the lower-left corner, which looks a bit like a calculator, takes you to the filter presets.

Materializer, shown in Figure 19.8, is my favorite KPT filter. It adds a texture by following the contours of the objects in the photo, rather than by simply covering the whole canvas with a texture. Be sure to see the materialized veggies in the color section.

Figure 19.8. Materializer gave my groceries a third dimension.

There are lots more KPT filters to play with. Some can even make QuickTime movies of your actions, let you swirl and stretch the image, put it into perspective, and insert the resulting animation into a PowerPoint presentation. You can then put your movie on the Web, or do whatever you can think of with it (as long as it's QuickTime-compatible).