Course Description

Join me in a fun filled 6 weeks of exploring the KPT filters! The course is based on the Corel KPT Collection, the only form KPT is available in at the present. The KPT Collection includes most of the filters from KPT 5, KPT 6 and KPT Effects and consist of 24 amazing effects. During the course I will demystify the somewhat intimidating interface for you and show you practical and fun ways to make use of the filters. KPT Collection brings together 24 must-have plug-in filters in a single, powerful software package. KPT Fluid Treat your entire image as a fluid to create and animate a variety of distortions, including controlling the thickness of the liquid and the size and speed of the brush stroke. Original Image KPT FraxFlame II Create stunning fractals such as crystal clouds, with an improved rendering engine and increased navigational control. KPT Gel Use realistic 3D paint tools to synthesize photo-realistic materials, and apply lighting, reflection, refraction and transparency. KPT Goo Smear, smudge, twirl, pinch or "finger-paint" an image to produce stunning liquid distortion effects or short animations. KPT Ink Dropper Add drops of liquid to a surface to create everything from water spots to smoky swirls. Original Image KPT Lightning Customize and create realistic lightning effects by controlling every aspect of the bolt and path, including its color, the number of forks, and attractor and generator points. KPT Materializer Create dynamic surface textures using bump maps and advanced controls, or "bend" an image over the contours of a surface texture. KPT Scatter Import a particle or grid of particles and scatter them over your original image to create complex patterns and textures. Control how the particles fall - in a grid, in spirals or at random - customize their density, size and opacity, and change the hue, luminance and saturation of their color. KPT ShapeShifter Create limitless shapes and objects with refracting glass edges, 3D light sources on beveled metallic surfaces, curved and lit Web buttons, UI gadgets and text. KPT Pyramid Paint Uses the Lab color mode to reduce and separate the colors in an image to resemble a painting. Users can adjust individual color components, saturation, hue, contrast, and lightness. Click on image to see the original source image. KPT Gradient Lab Design complex color blends and gradients by mixing shapes and colors in multiple layers with advanced blending and precise positioning. KPT Channel Surfing Splits an image into RGB and HLS color channels and lets you apply effects-blur, sharpen, contract, and value shift-to one or all channels. Original Image KPT Hyper Tiling Transform images into intricate tiling effects. Choose from 5 styles and customize the effect with transparency, advanced blending, and precise positioning in 4D space. Original Image Plus! KPT LensFlare KPT Blurrr KPT Equalizer KPT FiberOptix KPT Frax4D KPT FraxPlorer KPT Noize KPT Projector KPT RadWarp KPT Reaction KPT Turbulence Use it as a creative and time-saving way of achieving a design, to explore the infinite design possibilities of each filter or as a means of inspiration. With Corel KPT Collection, there are no limits! Enrolled students are eligible to purchase selected Corel products directly from Corel at the educational discounted rate. Click here to view more samples More Corel KPT Collection information This is a 6 week, self-paced, online course. A class discussion board to interact with any fellow classmates is available. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel Software at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

You will need a working copy of the Corel KPT Collection since Corel does not provide a demo version, or alternatively have KPT 5, KPT 6 and KPT Effects. NOTE: LVS is a Corel Training Partner. Enrolled LVS students are eligible to purchase Corel products directly from Corel Education Store at a substantial savings! Enter coupon code CRL10LVS when checking out to get an additional 10% discount on all Corel products! An image editor that supports third party plug in filters such as Corel Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop. A good working knowledge of the image editor you are using, including how to use the text tool, work with layers, masks and selections. Basic HTML page WS_FTP SmartFTP Students should have working knowledge of their operating system: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression These tutorials will show you how to crop and resize images that you want to place on your homework pages: Resize Images for the Web using Irfanview, a Freeware program *Mac* Resize Images for the Web using Goldberg 2.3, a Freeware program All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

None

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 Plug-in tips KPT Timeline Common features and shortcuts of the UI KPT Blurrrr Preset Manager KPT Fluid KPT Reaction KPT Rad Warp Lesson 2 Plug-in tips KPT Gradient Lab KPT Noize KPT Ink Dropper KPT Goo Lesson 3 What are Fractals KPT Frax 4D KPT Frax Plorer KPT Frax Flame II KPT Fiber Optics Lesson 4 KPT Projector KPT Hyper Tiling KPT Lens Flare KPT Lightning Lesson 5 KPT Pyramid Paint KPT Channel Surfing KPT Equalizer KPT Shape Shifter Lesson 6 KPT Turbulence KPT Matirializer KPT Gel KPT Scatter

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1 Organizing Plug-ins: Over time we all end up with a number of third party plug-ins, if you place them all in the plug-ins folder of your image editor it can get quit disorganized and it can be hard to find individual filters or setting files. It also can slow your image editor down at start up since it will have to load all those filters every time you start. Most image editors can be pointed to a plug-ins folder outside of the application. PhotoShop will let you select one outside folder for filters and PSP has the option of having multiple plug in folders that can be enabled and disabled. If you are using Photoshop or Corel Painter you can place a shortcut to your plug-in like KPT in the plug-in folder of your application and once you restart PhotoShop or Painter your plug-in will show up in the filter menu. The way I keep my plug-ins organizes is I make a folder called Plug-ins on my hard drive and in that folder I have three more folders called plug-ins 1, plug-ins 2 and plug-ins 3, that allows me to load all my filters or just one folder. I keep all my most used filters in plug-ins1 and the ones I don't use that much in the other folders. You may want to put some thought into how to organize your filters. KPT History: Kai's Power Tools are the brain child of Kay Krause a brilliant software designer. He joint HSC Software in 1991 and in 1992 KPT 1 was released, KPT evolved and got improved until 1995 with the release of KPT 3. If you happen to have the KPT 5 CD you will find KPT 3 on the disc as well. By that time the company changed into MetaTools and Bryce, Poser and Kai's Power Goo where released. In 1997 MetaTools and Fractal Design merged and the new company was called MetaCreations and shortly after KPT 5 was released. In 2000 Meta Creations sold off its graphic products and Corel acquired KPT, Bryce and Painter. Since then KPT 6 and KPT Effects have been released. The only commercial available version is The KPT Collection. In The mean time Kai Krause left Meta Creation and went back to Germany where lives in a castle on the Rhein river, dubbed Byteburg. If you want to read up a bit more on Kai Krause there is a short biography here and a longer treaty can be found here. KPT Collection: The Corel KPT Collection is currently the only commercial version of the KPT filters and is compiled of filters from KPT 5, KPT 6 and KPT Effects and is available for the Windows and Mac platform. Corel doesn't provide a demo version for KPT so you will need to have the full version installed or if you have KPT 5, KPT 6 and KPT Effects you will have all the filters covered in this class plus a few extras. As a LVS student you qualify for educational discounts at a number of resellers and educational pricing is also available from Corel on some of there products, check out the news page for more information. Some of you may wonder what filters are missing in the KPT Collection KPT 5, 6 and Effects have a total of 29 filters and 24 of those are included in the KPT Collection. The boring stuff - setting up KPT: We best get this part out of the way, no snoring in the last row while we go trough this. In this part I will show you the common parts of the KPT workspace that we will find in every filter. We also will cover the common keyboard shortcuts. Later on in the lesson we will take a close look at the specific features as they come up. The KPT Collection is compatible for both the Mac and Windows platform and I will give you the shortcuts for both. When listing keyboard shortcuts the Mac shortcut will be followed by the Windows accelerator key like this cmd/ctrl + 1. I f you are using a Mac hold down the command (Apple) key and press 1 and if you are using a PC hold down the ctrl key and press 1. You might as well open up KPT Blurrrr and follow along with me as we go trough the workspace. As you can see in the image below KPT Blurrrr is from KPT 5. Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

At the end of this class you will have a good understanding of the KPT interface and how to produce stunning results with each of the filters.

Course Reviews

Jane Carter: "Oh, indeed have I recommended this class to my friends and classmates! This class is just amazing! Peter does the most wonderful job of it, and will enhance as he goes along, when the opportunity comes up. This is really a WINNER!" More...