REVIEW: The Kara Collection

by: Pauli porkka


CD-Title: The Kara Collection

The Kara Collection is a collection of fonts, backgrounds and tools for the people doing special effects in pictures, titling and presentations.

This is not your average font collection containing just about the same fonts seen everywhere. This fontset contains Colored fonts and even Animated Fonts! I am quoting from the excellent AmigaGuide format documentation from the CD here.


As this CD-ROM goes into production, the Amiga remains the first and only
personal computer to include system support for multicolored fonts
('ColorFonts'). The ColorFont format, originally developed by Inter/Active
Softworks in the Calligrapher software, was incorporated as a standard
feature into the Amiga operating system beginning from version 2.0.
ColorFonts are rendered using multicolored bitmaps (up to 256 colors)
rather than a single bitplane or vector description used to build
monochrome fonts.

Kara Fonts, designed by Kara Blohm, are certainly the most famous collection of professional Amiga ColorFonts. The Kara Collection CD-ROM contains 80 Amiga ColorFonts, which are stored in the 'ColorFonts' drawer. The CD-ROM also includes hundreds of alternate palettes (for example, to render the same font in gold, steel, etc.), and copies of the ColorFonts pre-converted into non-standard file formats required by specific programs such as Broadcast Titler by InnoVision Technology, and PowerTitler and X-Titler by ClassX.

The Colored fonts in this CD are one of the most coolest looking fonts ever seen anywhere! Even the usage of these fonts couldn't be easier. Just like your normal fonts, just copy them to your fonts drawer and that is just about it. Ok, you do have to use the provided palettes to make them look like they are intended to look, but you can just load the palette from the CD and off you go. Just imagine Chrome and Gold colored fonts on your video titles or presentation animations. No normal one color font could make the same impact as these do. I'll include here a list of available ColorFonts in the CD and the available sizes.

    Font                        Size

   Bevel                      55    72    84   104 
   Brick                      55    72    84   103 
   Bullion                    78 
   Capsule                    82 
   Cast                       60    72    90   114 
   Chisel                     50    62    76    98 
   ChiselScript               86    98   116 
   ChiselSerif                55    72    84   104 
   Chrome                     55    72    80   104 
   ChromeChiselScript        115 
   ChromeScript               88 
   ChromeSerif                75   100   124 
   Column                     55    72    84    98 
   Embossed                   68    86   108 
   Engraved                   74   104 
   Glass                      78   104 
   GoldExtrude                78   104   132 
   Granite                    55    72    84   100 
   GraniteChisel              76   104   128 
   KaraBrushed                75   100   130 
   KaraChiselScriptRoman      80   100   130 
   KaraGothicChisel          104 
   KaraGothicSerif            75   100   130 
   KaraRomanExtrude           80   105   130 
   KaraTubular                98 
   Marble                     55    72    84   104 
   MarbleBevel                76   100   120 
   Wood                       58    72    90   114 

Other big chunk of the CD is taken by the plaquegrounds, i.e. different sized 'backgrounds' like marble, wood and granite. The scheme goes like this. You have 8 different styles (like already mentioned marble) in 4 different sizes (A, B, C, D = biggest) and in different plaques like square and framed 'boxes'. Unfortunately I just don't know how to explain this, but trust me they come in all sizes and styles. These could very well be used in presentation slides or titling purposes, or why not just resize and modify them and use them in your www page as a background to buttons or alike. Lets take marble for example: These are THE most realistic looking marble backgrounds I have ever seen. To get closer to real thing you would have to go to nearest place where they sell the real marble elements :-).

Now if the fonts and the plaques aren't enough you are also given the tools to handle them. Demo version of PPaint 6.4 is provided and is also used as default viewer for everything in this CD. It is not full version and you can't save your productions as freely as in full version, but you'll get the idea of the program since nothing else is missing.

Now you have these really nice colored fonts but you'd really need to change some parts of a certain fonts. What would you do? Just start the ColorType program provided on the CD. The all you need to modify and create ColorFonts. ColorType comes with quite similar interface to PPaint so if you are familiar with PPaint you'll get hang of it in no time. Now that I think of it, you will get hang of it in no time even if you had never seen PPaint. Really easy to use so no problems there. Nice and clean and gets the job done.

All in all this CD is a must for professionals needing good looking fonts for their presentations and/or tools needed to create them. Only bad side abut this CD is that there could have been even more of the plaquegrounds. Given the size (also means quality) of the existing ones, I do understand why there isn't any more of them, but hey You can never be too satisfied, now can you?

Publisher

Cloanto
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