KPT Effects

Rating:
Summary: More to these filters than meets the eye
Review: This is the first release by Corel of a KPT product, the previous were re-badged after being bought from MetaCreations. Reading a description of a filter doesn't really do it justice. Scatter is one of my favourites, and while it does scatter images over a pattern until you play with it you can't really judge the variations possible. You can create a series of spiral arms, or add a load of images in a mask to fill a shape, create a blanket of snow with a ragged edge. Similairly with the lightning effect you can control and create very realistic lightning, or make a comet, or a coloured laser beam. Hypertiling is very powerful, and it can create some interesting patterns. The pyramid paint allows some impressionist type images to be made quickly, but it can also be used to totally chnage the colours in an image to change a desert into an artic scene.
To get the most out of the filters you need to experiment, which has always been the case with KPT filters. Using the recall panel and saving presets makes it easy to get back to an interesting setting.
It is good to see a four colour landscape manual in the box too.