FYI - Insights Corel KPT 5

 Available from Corel and released in the 4th quarter of 1998, KPT 5 incorporates some truly unique FX.  With some, you can see their basis in KPT 2, Fractal Explorer and Convolver, but all grown up in this latest version.  As true to form, KPT5 is a plethora of plugins also having many effects within the plugins themselves.  The interface is still the typical Bryce-like interface, (which BTW I like, and should be incorporated into all MetaCreations products, IMHO) and has shown a bit of maturity in its GUI when comparing it to the Bryce 3D GUI and other previous types.   When launched, the plugin fills your screen with its own GUI, a bit disturbing at first, but appreciated once you get used to it.  There are many presets, controls and preferences to use and set, plenty to accomodate most any taste in working environments, and will generate countless unique special FX variations.  For example, the mast image above was created entirely within KPT 5.  The only part done using Photoshop itself was creating the text, then selecting it.  The selection was empty when I opened ShapeShifter to apply the FX, and the result is very nice.  A little touch up to hide part of the curl on the number 5 (it's on a different layer than the KPT is) and I was done.

These plugins are very powerful and versatile and you will not discover their full potential over night.  There are so many ways to change each filter's parameters that you'll soon find yourself looking at things in different ways and learning how to integrate one effect with another.  So, take your time and simply do a little E & D (explore and discover) which I think is the best way to learn your way around the plugins.  The presets are great places to start, some leave you wondering 'how'd they do that?', and you can add your own.   Many of the filters can work on an empty layer, and indeed for some it is more advantageous to do so.  The preview window is resizable, and updates in real time for almost all the filters.

Here's a rundown of the plugins with some examples:

	Blurrrr has nine blur FX.   Most interesting are the Spiral, Camera Optics, Spin, and the two Weave blurs.  Shown here is Zoom.
	Noize has nine styles of noise.   These will create some fantastic cloud FX, and if you're a Bryce user, will create some really wonderful terrains.  The opacity can be controlled as well as the amount of FX.
	RadWarp is extremely cool.   It's like taking a mirrored ball, and warping and twisting it to get different reflective angles.
	Smoothie is a little different.   It takes your image and makes it Black and White, but you can adjust the amount of greyscale in it by specifying how hard the blending goes.  It's somewhat of a Black and White surrealistic effect, or posterization (solarization) and some image reversal thrown in for good measure.  Basically, all those cool things you used to do in the darkroom while experimenting during the development of black and white photo paper.
	Frax4D allows you to make a lot of very unusual shapes, blobs and globs, with colored lighting FX.
	FraxFlame is like having your very own Nebulae creator.  The shapes it creates are wispy, billowy, stringy, fiber optic-like.
	FraxPlorer will create  undulating FX in the preview right before your eyes.  Just click the reset button, and it cranks through the fractal mathematics showing the results in real time inside the preview window.  Just like previous KPT fractal plugins, but this one is much more sophisticated and versatile.
	FiberOptix makes everything from realistic rain and meteor showers to showing thousands and thousands of colored fibers layed side by side, twisting and turning, or straight.  Here, I've created rain drops.
	Orb-It makes a handful to thousands of spheres floating on your canvas.   Great for bubbles, random molecules and balls.
	ShapeShifter creates 3D depth and bevels from masks and marquees.  Just draw your marquee, open up ShapeShifter, and you can control the amount of beveling, lighting, colors, shadows, glowness, offsets, opacity etc.   A very cool plugin that will let you do some great FX on your images.