Kai’s Power Tips & Where’s Kai now?
In the “good old days” of Photoshop lore, back before Photoshop 3 and layers made everything so darn easy, there was a fellow by the name of Kai Krause who was a magician with Photoshop. For some reason, call it brilliance or an intuitive mind, Kai was able to “Think Photoshop” in his mind to come up with some amazing methods of creating interesting (sometimes not so interesting) effects. In late 1992 and 1993, he posted these “Tips” on the AOL Photoshop forum. At the time, they were amazing–and to a certain extent, they still are. To learn and understand Kai’s tips is to glean a better fundamental understanding of Photoshop itself.
What ever happened to those tips? The Gurus Network has them archived on their web site at the Guru’s Kai’s Power Tips page.
What about Kai himself?
According to a recent bio, he acquired a 1000-year-old castle on the Rhein river, dubbed Byteburg, where he and a small team are developing his next generation software project, code-named “TimeDoubler”. There’s also a few Kai’isms from Edge: The World Question Center:
Kai’s Existential Dilemma
I think….
there….
4a.m.
Kai’s Exactness Dilemma
93.8127 % of all statistics are useless.
Kai’s Example Dilemma
A good analogy is like a diagonal frog.
There’s also a blog record from Down the Avenue by Renee L. Blodgett that reports on a recent interview of Kai Krause by Chris Shipley at the DEMO conference that happened in February in Scottsdale AZ. DEMO has a video of Kai’s interview.
Kai Krause interview photo Feb. 14, 2005.
He still has long hair. . .I always liked that about him.
PhotoshopNews will be doing a feature story about Kai in the not too distant future.
Kai, if you’re out there, give me a ping. . .
And, if you don’t know anything about Kai, read the tips above, you’ll learn something about Photoshop. Then do some homework and look up; Kai’s Power Tools, Bryce, LivePicture, Goo & Soap. There will be a test at mid-term.
Comments are on.
Normal rules apply.
April 9th, 2005 at 1:10 am
Thouroughly enjoyed that interview. Thank you Jeff and thank you Kai. It would be tough to determine how much of my passion for imagery stems from Kai’s work - from Power Goo to Bryce. Great to ’see’ that things are going well.
April 9th, 2005 at 6:14 am
KPT 3 was the first plugin I ever bought. I still have it, although I rarely use it anymore. Sometimes though, late at night, when I need to revive my creative juices for one more push before I flame out entirely, I open up that “bunch of balls dropped into a pile of mud” interface and, eventually, smile. I’m ready to make that push now; I feel better somehow knowing that Kai is still with me.
April 9th, 2005 at 6:16 pm
Convolver (and those memory dots) were genius.
December 20th, 2005 at 9:10 pm
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixel_pimp/75438658/
I was thinking about Kai the other day. He is like Willy Wonka working way on something that will blow people completely away!
January 9th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
I still have Bryce 5 loaded on my PowerBook, thank goodness for the OSX port. It’s the best landform creation tool out there for under $300. Makes beautiful sunsets too. Too bad it wasn’t developed further to interact better with programs such as Poser, Infini-D, Strata, LightWave…
Kai’s a cool guy, I met him nine years ago after a lecture he gave at MWSF. He *is* Photoshop.
January 11th, 2006 at 3:14 am
I have a kind of photo history of Kai Krause and company at the following links:
Kai:
http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/metacreations/kaios.html
Ben Weis, Andrea Pessino, Moe Doucet and Sree Kotay:
http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/metacreations/ben_andrea_moe_sree.html
Phil Clevenger, Sree Kotay, Kai and Eric Wenger:
http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/metacreations/phil_with_balloon.html
And even Jeff Schewe:
http://www.amenfoto.com/gallery/metacreations/schewe_and_johnson.html
re: KPT 3 - yes, it was (is) a great product. This image was done with Gradient Designer in KPT 3. Could this be done in Photoshop alone?
http://www.amenfoto.com/blog/2006/01/raine-tadevich-gd.php
January 16th, 2006 at 6:34 pm
Well the metacreations pixs are interesting. I don’t know how Kai was involved with the business aspect, but my $1K investment is now worth about $30. I”m sure others were hurt worse during this fun adventure.