Power Tools? Power Toys!
Written: Oct 31 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: makes some effects easier than doing pixel by pixel, fun, a decent toy.
Cons: overpriced and frequently not really useful
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| kyte50's Full Review: MetaCreations Kai's Power Tools 5 |
Kai Krause has certainly taken the filter market by its virtual throat, over the years, having produced some very interesting and sometimes useful effects. Metacreations has now sold its PowerTools to Corel (and lord knows where that will lead) and one wonders if we have seen the last of KPT..I suspect this to be the case.
However, right now we are looking at KPT5, a set of 10 filter effects: some are useful and some are just plain fun.
1. Blurrr: I find this one very useful because I use Paintshop Pro, and its native blur filter is very restricted. There are 8 different types of blur effects, ranging from a standard motion blur, through to gaussian and spiral, as well as camera optics. These can all then be further altered by radius and angle of blur. A very useful tool.
2. Noize: Not so useful, for the things I do. I mostly use noise as a way of avoiding banding in jpg images, and this filter isnt what i need to do it. If you are looking for a decent cloudmaker, however, you cant go past it.
3. Radwarp: alters the appearance of your graphic on 5 parameters. I havent found a use for this as yet and so cannot comment further. It makes for some pretty wild effects, but as to its usefulness...I would probably put it into the "play with it and forget it" category.
4. Smoothie: Has me completely confused. I have no idea why anyone would want to generate a random black and white (or greyscale) graphic, and then smooth it out. At first glance, that appears to be all this filter does, and in spite of playing with it off and on, have not been able to get it to perform any tricks of note. One for the trashcan.
5. Frax4D: Fractal generated 3D shapes. Theoretically 4 dimensional.. Comes with 24 presets which are fairly cool. It looks fun, takes forever to render, and it is completely useless unless perhaps you are creating "art" for viewing. I generally ignore this one, though initially it was my favourite toy.
6. FraxFlame: This filter generates more possibilities for backgrounds and wallpapers than I have seen in quite a while. I really love to use it in combination with other filters from other companies, rather than by itself, these days.
7.Fraxplorer: creates fascinating graphics from the mandelbrot or julia set. Colourful and extreme, they are useful for desktop wallpapers, but not for web backgrounds (I have seen them turn up on the web and trust me, they dont work that way). In combination with blurrr and filters from other sources, some very interesting effects can be achieved.
8. Fiberoptix: more or less self explanatory, this produces fibrous effects of varying kinds. I find it boring, though a more artistic person may find a use for it
9. Orb-it: creates spheres on your graphic. an updated version of KPT3's spheroid designer. Kai completely missed the boat on this one. its less configurable and less useful and far less friendly than version 3. Forget it.
10. Shapeshifter: It took me a while to work this one out, because it ought to have been called buttonmaker. I guess that was too boring for a KPT filter. All that aside, however, this tool is actually quite useful. It can create glassy effects and pseudo-transparent buttons, which in some circumstances can be useful.
In conclusion, I can safely say that the only filters which I find useful and make use of with any regularity, are Blurrr, Fraxflame and Shapeshifter. I have played with the others, but, as the title of this review suggests, they are little more than toys.
Do I feel as if my money was wasted? Well, I would have, had I not purchased the software second hand, given that in Australia, the price is in excess of $300. The filters, whilst fun and in some cases useful, are vastly overpriced, especially in a graphical climate of increasing numbers of free filters which will do either exactly the same or very much the same tasks. I shall not be buying Kai's Powertools again.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
kyte50
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Location: Newcastle, Australia
Reviews written: 13
Trusted by: 1 member
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