Editors' rating |
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Kaleider Specifications
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Emulate kaleidoscope, mirroring, 3D mirroring and funneling effects.
What's that? We have to stop playing with Kaleider and actually write a review of it? We're not sure that we can. This mesmerizing program does so many cool things that we're having trouble prying ourselves away from it.
Despite our love for this program, we cannot tell a lie: its interface is a mess. There are buttons and menus and things across the top and bottom and down the right side. We can't even say that we understand most of what the program does. But it's fun and it's beautiful, and for that, we love it. Kaleider allows users to apply a very wide range of effects to images, making them look as though they're being viewed through a kaleidoscope. Some results look like psychedelic art from the 1970s, others like Victorian wallpaper. The number of effects and possible ways that they can be combined is staggering, with funnel, mirror, kaleidoscope, and 3D options. Users can grab a point on an image and drag it, shifting the effects endlessly. Although users can create and save new images with the program, we also enjoyed its automatic effects feature, which animates an image according to user-defined parameters and can optionally play music. We could spend hours staring at this thing and watching the shapes change. Users who are actually interested in learning the ins and outs of the program will enjoy the well-written built-in Help file, but all users will enjoy playing around with the program and experimenting with its features.