Kai's Power Tools
Encyclopedia
Kai's Power Tools are a set of API plugins created by Kai Krause
that were designed for use with Adobe Systems
Photoshop and Corel
Photo-Paint. Kai's Power Tools were sold to Corel when MetaCreations
was closed.
The phrase Kai's Power Tools is often abbreviated to KPT.
There are various versions of Kai's Power Tools. KPT 3, 5, 6, and X sets are compilations of different filters.
The program interface features a reward-based function in which a bonus function is revealed as the user moves towards more complex aspects of the tool.
; the level of precision and varying effects can be achieved by using numerical values of colour, tint
, hue
, saturation
, contrast
, brightness
, luminosity
, and posterize.
The KPT Projector takes the current image or selection and offers a number of interactive perspective warp effects. To a large extent, with its draggable distortion handles and its moving, scaling and rotating options, this simply duplicates Adobe Photoshop's
Free Transform capabilities. What is completely different is the ability to rotate the bitmap image in 3D space and to tile the results if desired. It can also animate the distortions by dragging keyframes from the preview window into an animation palette. KPT 6 will then preview the animation and output it to various sizes in avi
or mov format. This animation capability is even more useful with the KPT Turbulence filter. This is another distortion filter, but one that treats the image as if it was completely liquid. The preview panel shows the animation in real time.
The KPT Goo filter is used to produce a single frame freeform liquid distortion. This filter is available both with KPT 6 and the standalone version. It works by effectively turning a bitmap image into a liquid that can be interactively smeared, smudged, twirled, and pinched with the range of tools on offer. The obvious use is to distort photographic portraits into caricatures.
KPT Materializer can create advanced surface textures based on bump maps that define troughs and peaks. It can use any external image for the basis of the bump map or alternatively the user can pick out the hue, saturation, luminance or red, green, or blue channel of the current image. It can then offset, scale and rotate the texture map, control its lighting, and even blend in a reflection map. The filter can be used for anything from providing an oil-painting feel to an entire image, to giving the illusion of depth to a selection.
Also producing the impression of depth is the KPT Gel filter which uses various paint tools to synthesize photo-realistic 3D materials such as metals, liquids, or plastics. Gel painting is very different from traditional 2D painting as the brush strokes pool together when they touch and refract the underlying image. It can also manipulate 3D paint—once it has been added—by twirling, pinching, and carving it.
The opposite is true of the Equalizer filter, which is used for applying variations on sharpening effects. The filter has three modes. The first mode, Equalizer, looks and works rather like the graphic equalizer on a stereo system, enabling adjustment of the level of pixel contrast within nine bands of different visual frequencies. The second mode, Contrast Sharpen, allows for increasing the contrast between light and dark areas in an image. The third mode, Bounded Sharpen, can sharpen an image without causing oversharpening, which can lead to halo effects.
This feature is particularly useful when pulling out the detail in an image softened by resizing.
KPT SceneBuilder is used for producing photorealistic 3D
scenes by importing and rendering 3DS files. The main image window offers three tabs for editing in 2D
and 3D mode and for setting up the object's final texture. Many users regard this filter as being the most impressive because it acts as a standalone 3D Rendering Tool and provides control over everything from transparency
, reflection
, refraction
, bump mapping
through to multiple light sources, and so on but without the ability to create or edit objects.
The final filter, KPT SkyEffects, also has its roots in Metacreations' experience with 3D programs such as Bryce
and RayDream. This filter is designed to simulate the interaction between the light from the sun or moon with no less than six atmospheric layers of haze, fog and cloud. The filter is typical of the KPT 6 collection as a whole: at times the interface is inspired and offers the ability to create beautiful reddening sunsets simply by interactively dragging the sun toward the horizon, producing realistic sunsets and moonscapes.
KPT 6 provides a new engine in the form of The KPT Reaction, which takes a reaction seed and turns it into a seamlessly tiling pattern based on a reaction diffusion process. It offers random noise, regular dots or reticulated voronoi
patterns or a bitmap image itself as the seed.
Corel has no plans for any updates.
Kai Krause
Kai Krause is a software and graphical user interface designer, best known for founding MetaCreations Corp., his Kai's Power Tools series of products, and for his contributions to graphical user interface design.-Biography:...
that were designed for use with Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
Photoshop and Corel
Corel
Corel Corporation from the abbreviation is a computer software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, that specializes in graphics processing, similar to Adobe Systems...
Photo-Paint. Kai's Power Tools were sold to Corel when MetaCreations
MetaCreations
MetaCreations was a computer software company founded in 1997 by the mergers of MetaTools, Fractal Design Corporation, Ray Dream, Specular, and RTG...
was closed.
The phrase Kai's Power Tools is often abbreviated to KPT.
There are various versions of Kai's Power Tools. KPT 3, 5, 6, and X sets are compilations of different filters.
The program interface features a reward-based function in which a bonus function is revealed as the user moves towards more complex aspects of the tool.
Filters
The KPT Convolver is a mathematics based filterFilter (software)
A filter is a computer program to process a data stream. Some operating systems such as Unix are rich with filter programs. Even Windows has some simple filters built into its command shell, most of which have significant enhancements relative to the similar filter commands that were available in...
; the level of precision and varying effects can be achieved by using numerical values of colour, tint
Tint
In color theory, a tint is the mixture of a color with white.Tint may also refer to:* Tint control, an adjustment to correct for phase error in the picture color on a NTSC television set* Tint , an album by Merzbow...
, hue
Hue
Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically , as "the degree to which a stimulus can be describedas similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow,"...
, saturation
Saturation
Saturation or saturated may refer to:- Meteorology :* Dew point, which is a temperature that occurs when atmospheric humidity reaches 100% and the air is saturated with moisture- Physics :...
, contrast
Contrast (vision)
Contrast is the difference in visual properties that makes an object distinguishable from other objects and the background. In visual perception of the real world, contrast is determined by the difference in the color and brightness of the object and other objects within the same field of view...
, brightness
Brightness
Brightness is an attribute of visual perception in which a source appears to be radiating or reflecting light. In other words, brightness is the perception elicited by the luminance of a visual target...
, luminosity
Luminosity
Luminosity is a measurement of brightness.-In photometry and color imaging:In photometry, luminosity is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to luminance, which is the density of luminous intensity in a given direction. The SI unit for luminance is candela per square metre.The luminosity function...
, and posterize.
The KPT Projector takes the current image or selection and offers a number of interactive perspective warp effects. To a large extent, with its draggable distortion handles and its moving, scaling and rotating options, this simply duplicates Adobe Photoshop's
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
Free Transform capabilities. What is completely different is the ability to rotate the bitmap image in 3D space and to tile the results if desired. It can also animate the distortions by dragging keyframes from the preview window into an animation palette. KPT 6 will then preview the animation and output it to various sizes in avi
Audio Video Interleave
Audio Video Interleave , known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback...
or mov format. This animation capability is even more useful with the KPT Turbulence filter. This is another distortion filter, but one that treats the image as if it was completely liquid. The preview panel shows the animation in real time.
The KPT Goo filter is used to produce a single frame freeform liquid distortion. This filter is available both with KPT 6 and the standalone version. It works by effectively turning a bitmap image into a liquid that can be interactively smeared, smudged, twirled, and pinched with the range of tools on offer. The obvious use is to distort photographic portraits into caricatures.
KPT Materializer can create advanced surface textures based on bump maps that define troughs and peaks. It can use any external image for the basis of the bump map or alternatively the user can pick out the hue, saturation, luminance or red, green, or blue channel of the current image. It can then offset, scale and rotate the texture map, control its lighting, and even blend in a reflection map. The filter can be used for anything from providing an oil-painting feel to an entire image, to giving the illusion of depth to a selection.
Also producing the impression of depth is the KPT Gel filter which uses various paint tools to synthesize photo-realistic 3D materials such as metals, liquids, or plastics. Gel painting is very different from traditional 2D painting as the brush strokes pool together when they touch and refract the underlying image. It can also manipulate 3D paint—once it has been added—by twirling, pinching, and carving it.
The opposite is true of the Equalizer filter, which is used for applying variations on sharpening effects. The filter has three modes. The first mode, Equalizer, looks and works rather like the graphic equalizer on a stereo system, enabling adjustment of the level of pixel contrast within nine bands of different visual frequencies. The second mode, Contrast Sharpen, allows for increasing the contrast between light and dark areas in an image. The third mode, Bounded Sharpen, can sharpen an image without causing oversharpening, which can lead to halo effects.
This feature is particularly useful when pulling out the detail in an image softened by resizing.
KPT SceneBuilder is used for producing photorealistic 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
scenes by importing and rendering 3DS files. The main image window offers three tabs for editing in 2D
2D geometric model
A 2D geometric model is a geometric model of an object as two-dimensional figure, usually on the Euclidean or Cartesian plane.Even though all material objects are three-dimensional, a 2D geometric model is often adequate for certain flat objects, such as paper cut-outs and machine parts made of...
and 3D mode and for setting up the object's final texture. Many users regard this filter as being the most impressive because it acts as a standalone 3D Rendering Tool and provides control over everything from transparency
Transparency (graphic)
Transparency is possible in a number of graphics file formats. The term transparency is used in various ways by different people, but at its simplest there is "full transparency" i.e. something that is completely invisible. Of course, only part of a graphic should be fully transparent, or there...
, reflection
Reflection (physics)
Reflection is the change in direction of a wavefront at an interface between two differentmedia so that the wavefront returns into the medium from which it originated. Common examples include the reflection of light, sound and water waves...
, refraction
Refraction
Refraction is the change in direction of a wave due to a change in its speed. It is essentially a surface phenomenon . The phenomenon is mainly in governance to the law of conservation of energy. The proper explanation would be that due to change of medium, the phase velocity of the wave is changed...
, bump mapping
Bump mapping
Bump mapping is a technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting calculations. The result is an apparently bumpy surface rather than a...
through to multiple light sources, and so on but without the ability to create or edit objects.
The final filter, KPT SkyEffects, also has its roots in Metacreations' experience with 3D programs such as Bryce
Bryce (software)
Bryce is a 3D modeling, rendering and animation program specializing in fractal landscapes. The name is taken from Bryce Canyon—a rugged region with many of the same landscapes that were first simulated with the software.- History :...
and RayDream. This filter is designed to simulate the interaction between the light from the sun or moon with no less than six atmospheric layers of haze, fog and cloud. The filter is typical of the KPT 6 collection as a whole: at times the interface is inspired and offers the ability to create beautiful reddening sunsets simply by interactively dragging the sun toward the horizon, producing realistic sunsets and moonscapes.
Other effects
Kai's Power Tools 6 features a Lens Flare effect for precisely managing the type of glow, halo, streaks, and reflection. The addition of a library of preset effects helps to overcome this by allowing the user to choose a standard effect and then interactively position the flare in the image preview.KPT 6 provides a new engine in the form of The KPT Reaction, which takes a reaction seed and turns it into a seamlessly tiling pattern based on a reaction diffusion process. It offers random noise, regular dots or reticulated voronoi
Voronoi diagram
In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a special kind of decomposition of a given space, e.g., a metric space, determined by distances to a specified family of objects in the space...
patterns or a bitmap image itself as the seed.
Corel has no plans for any updates.