Where’s my KPT Collection update?
Friday, August 29th, 2008
metacreations
Back in “the day” I was a huge fan of Kai’s Power Tools by MetaCreations. Pretty much whatever was release by Kai Krause became an instant success, at least that’s how it seemed to me at the time. Kai’s Power Tools was such a useful set of plug-ins for Photoshop, of course there where a lot of useless ones but still handy none the less. I’m still not exactly sure why MetaCreations sold all of it’s applications to other companies back in the late nineties but something must have happened.
corel
Yet what confusses me even more is WHY did Corel get so many of these programs!?! Even in the late nineties they where a low end company who’s products seemed to be only marketing to amatures. So how the heck did they get the Kai applications as well as Painter!?! I don’t know, but I wish I did. To this day I still think Adobe was absolutely stupid for passing up these apps and not integrating them into the family.
Seriously though… The last update to Kai’s Power Tools, renamed KPT, was back in 2003. Okay sure the software still looked the same, no major upgrade just all the smaller applications bundled into one large pakage, everything functioned just as expect and it actually supported OS X. So why the rant?
Well 2003 was 5 years ago and the blasted software does even work on Photoshop CS3. Heck I don’t think it even worked on CS2. I heard some people getting to run but I never could. I mean like what the heck, this use to be a flagship product for MetaCreations and virtually nobody has heard of it today. That’s a shame.
I’ve called and spoken to techs over at Corel regarding this and they keep giving me the run around. *Shaking my head* I just don’t understand. Heck the interface and apps don’t even need to updated with new features or a new interface, just support for new applications and maybe multiprocessor so I can pump out more mathematical fractals, would be nice.
So is there a company out there could could actually release a decent set of plug-ins reminiscent of KPT? All I know is it sure won’t been Alien Skin. A company that I thinks makes wonder plug-ins for Photoshop is a company called On One Software. I’ve grown to love their Genuine Fractals for enlarging images and Mask Pro for complex image cut outs. They make very fast, very clean and easy to understand tools that keep on winner award after award. I have no doubt in my mind that if they made somethng similar to the old KPT Collection they would have another winning program to add to their arsenal.