One User's Opinion

© 2000 by Foster Coburn. All Rights Reserved.

Review of Corel KPT 6

Today I'm going to give a look to the filters in Corel's KPT 6. Corel, you ask? Yes, they bought this package from Metacreations back in April. You might even remember that some of these filters were originally sold as separate downloads before being bundled in KPT 6.

Let me first comment on the interface. I hate it. Now before you send me an e-mail and complain, I know a number of you love it. I use a graphics tablet and find that trying to make accurate adjustments to the floating spheres is darned near impossible. And trying to recreate effects is equally difficult. My request would be that two interfaces be offered. The new one would be a "normal" interface similar to other software. Then the user could choose which of the two interfaces was preferred. That way everyone could get the interface they liked the most. Now that I have that out of the way, I'll move on to looking at the individual filters.

KPT Goo

This filter was originally a standalone package. I'm thrilled to finally have it available as a plug-in. With Goo, it is easy to paint distortions on an image. Probably the most common use is to turn a person's photo into more of a caricature. In only a couple of minutes I was able to transform myself as shown at left.

KPT Equalizer

Equalizer provides a way to sharpen, blur or smooth an image through adjustments to an image's frequencies. These changes can be easily made with the sliders shown at right. You'll note that they resemble that good old stereo component, the equalizer.

KPT Projector

You might remember the basic functionality of this filter as being called Planar Tiling. Images can be stretched or rotated in both 2D and 3D space. Add to that the ability to tile and mirror the image and you can create some really interesting patterns. Better yet, use one of the presets to do things automatically. If you want to manipulate an image an exact amount, forget it. The interface doesn't give you any info.

KPT Gel

If you've used an image editor, you've surely used a brush to apply some paint. Gel takes this to a completely different level by allowing you to paint with "paint" that works like liquid metal or plastic. A number of brush types are provided with controls over how they work. Combine this filter with a tablet and you can truly paint with a liquid metal brush. My result is shown at left.

KPT LensFlare

You gotta love Lens Flares. One thing I loved about a product called SPG Web Tools was its wide assortment of flares. I'm not quite sure that KPT LensFlare has quite as many options, but it has a ton of them. You can control location, color, size and much more of each flare. Since the interface is confusing, it is great that a wide variety of presets are provided. That is if you can figure out the funny little icon that brings up the presets. At right is a peaceful mountain scene with the Hyper Flare added.

KPT Turbulence

Best described, Turbulence creates blobs. And these blobs can be animated if you so desire. There are ways to choose colors along with a wide variety of effects. Again, the best way to figure this filter out is to study some of the presets.

KPT Materializer

Let's just think of Materializer as a Bump Map feature on steroids. Adding a texture to an image can be done by variances in the hue, saturation, colors and much more. You can even use it to wrap an image over a surface texture. I've combined Turbulence to create an image full of blobs with Materializer to give it some depth. The resulting image is shown at left.

KPT Reaction

Hmmm, how can I describe this one? It creates textures. In fact it would be very handy as a way to create surface textures to be used as bump maps or for Corel Painter's paper textures. The resulting textures will also tile perfectly. I took one of the presets and modified some of the settings to get the zebra-like texture at right in only a couple minutes.

KPT SceneBuilder

Of all the filters in this package, SceneBuilder is the one most appropriately named. It is basically a 3D rendering program with a somewhat limited feature set. The fact that it began life as RAYflect Photo Tracer is quite evident as yet another baffling interface is found in this filter. For those comfortable working with 3D rendering software, you'll probably feel right at home.

KPT SkyEffects

SkyEffects is another filter that began life elsewhere. It was known as RAYflect Four Seasons and its main purpose is to create skies. Funny how it too matches its name quite well. You have control over clouds, haze, rainbows, the sun and moon and more. While I love the resulting skies, I was very disappointed in the quality of the image. There was very bad banding evident throughout the image. It almost makes me wonder if the result was palletted rather than a true color image.

The Verdict

The usefulness of these filters varies. Some of them are quite handy while others are of limited use. One of the best parts of the package was the 180 page printed manual that gives detailed explanation of each of the filters and the many hidden controls. This was the only thing that saved me from looking at the interface and just giving up. If you're in the market for Photoshop plug-ins, this wouldn't be the first package I'd want in my arsenal. But it would be maybe the third or fourth addition.

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Foster D. Coburn III has written six best-selling books on graphics software and is currently the Webmaster of the Graphics Unleashed Web site.

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