Reviews @ Applelust

Photoshop Plug-in Review: KTP 6

Photoshop Plug-in: KPT6
Reviewer: Joel Davies
Cost: $149.00
Publisher: Corel - www.corel.com
Rating: 4.75 bites from the Apple

Installation - piece of cake - just select your plug-ins folder in the installation window. As long as you can remember where you installed Adobe Photoshop, this only takes a moment.

Click the Apple to see KPT 6 filter examples.

Like most of the former Metacreations titles, KPT 6 is build on a pretty cool, yet sometiimes mystifying interface.With a little practive and experimentation, you can easily decipher the odd buttons and sliders, and start playing around with the filters.

Most of the filters are lot of fun just to goof around with - after spending a while in the "creative process" - you will often be pleased with the results.

The Goo and Gel filters ate up a lot of my time. Goo is essentially like the Liquify feature in Photoshop. I find Goo a lot easier and fluid (pardon the pun) to use - the interface is much better than Liquify, and the results look a bit cleaner. I think Goo is actually the inspiration for Liquify, but don't quote me on that. Gel lets you spread a viscous jelly over your image and smoosh it around using a variety of tools. Yuck. However - this is incredibly entertaining. Ironically - while these were tremendous fun to play with - I'm having a hard time thinking of practical applications for Gel.

The Equalizer filter set (Equalizer, Bounded Sharpen and Contrast Sharpen) are well done and actually will have plenty of more practical uses - so they balance out the pure fun of Goo and Gel

The three-dimensional effects of Scenebuilder, Materializer, Projector, and SkyEffects are the strength of the suite of filters. Scenebuilder allows rudimentary 3D models to be surfaced and rendered in Photoshop. This can be handy to 3D artist who need a little more flexibility with Photoshop. SkyEffects is essentially a scaled down version of Bryce's sky renderer ported as a photoshop filter - which can be great for artists like myself who are looking for more than the crappy clouds that Photoshop supplies. Materializer is a lot like Goo - but can be used to create large, organic abstract shapes for image backgrounds (think of the "Foam" series in the Appearance Control Panel). I found Projector to produce a much better reproduction of some perspective effects than simply using Transform.

In all - KPT 6 does a good job expanding capabilities of existing Photoshop effects, and adds some ability to develop background imagery without the need for stock photography, custom photo shoots or a full version of Bryce. It's effects are often limited only by the amount of time you are willing spend experimenting. The package is pretty polished after 5 previous versions, and stability is excellent.

The Verdict

Speed - 4.5

Most of the filters rendered very quickly. Be prepared for the render times to increase significantly as you increase resolution.

Complexity/Usability - 5

All of the filters have custom interfaces that are fairly simple to learn. Corel also provides a nice manual that provides far more depth than one might expect.

Stablilty - 5

No crashes, hang -ups, or RAM errors, even at very high resolutions.

Flexibilty/Originality - 4.75

As usual with filter sets, some have improble application value, but the 3D effects can be quite handy to artists.

Value - 4.5

149.00 may not be a bad price considering the inclusion of the Bryce Sky engine and basic 3D effects.

Rating: 4.75 Bites from the Apple.

Joel Davies

MacBook Pro (5-17-06) Dr. Neale Monks. A subjective review of the MacBook Pro
Freeway 4 Pro (2-28-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Freeway Pro, the Quark-like web design program from Softpress, has been substantially revised and sports a bright new look. But do the changes go more than skin deep? Neale Monks finds out.
Astrostack (1-18-06) Dr. Neale Monks. Long respected as one best astronomical image processing applications about, in its newest incarnation AstroStack now runs on the Macintosh. Has the wait been worthwhile?
Virtual PC 7 (11-23-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Virtual PC 7 is the update to the venerable Windows emulator to be entirely all Microsoft’s own work. Can Mac users expect to see any dramatic changes?
Eudora Pro 6.2 (8-5-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Eudora has been one of the most popular e-mail clients for the Macintosh for more than a decade. Neale Monks finds out how it compares with the Mail application that comes with OS X
MacAstronomica (4-22-05) Dr. Neale Monks. How does this amateur naked eye astronomy software stack up?
iKey 2.0 (3-11-05) Jeremy Young. How well does this automation utility work? How much time will you save?
Wolfram Research Publicon (3-11-05) Jeff Terry Does this new scientific word processor live up to the potential?
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 3, Word (1-28-05) Dr. Neale Monks. Are there enough new features to necessitate a jump from v.X?
REALbasic 5.5 (12-03-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Neale takes a look at the latest version of this programming package.
Office 2004, Part 2, Excel and Entourage (11-05-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the second part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at Excel and Entourage.
Phone Valet 2.0 (11-05-04) Pat St-Arnaud. The best question to ask might be "Is there anything that you can't do with this telephone/Mac integration tool?"
TiPaint Touch-up Kit and iKlear iPod Cleaning Kit (10-29-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Is it possible to restore the shiny good looks of iPods and PowerBooks even after years of use? Neale Monks looks at two cleaning products designed especially for Apple hardware.
Microsoft Office 2004, Part 1, PowerPoint (10-15-04) Dr. Neale Monks. In the first part of his review of Office 2004, Neale Monks looks at PowerPoint, for many people still the benchmark for presentation software.
ScrapX (9-17-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Aqueous Software's ScrapX brings the Scrapbook to OS X
CDFinder (8-20-04) Dr. Neale Monks. Finding what you want from among a stack of similar looking CDs can be a hassle, but help is at hand. Neale Monks looks at CDFinder, a budget-priced but powerful cataloguing tool.
Endnote 7 (8-13-04) Dr. Markus Geisen. EndNote 7 is a literature database that seamlessly interacts with your word processor. Is the latest version worth the upgrade?