We all have used kaleidoscope in childhood. A kaleidoscope is made using three or four plain mirrors placed together in form of a box, putting some colored glass pieces or beads inside it and rotating it. When we view the glasses from the side opening, we see symmetrical patterns from different angles which produces an amusing effect.
On a computer we can have the same effect produced using an image with the help of a free software called Silicon Mirror & Kaleidoscope. This software comes with two parts – an application for producing the kaleidoscopic effects using a source image and a screensaver that producing screen simulations of kaleidoscopic effects.
After launching Silicon Mirror & Kaleidoscope application, you can open an image inside it. You can change the stack to 4 to view how it looks when four copies of the same image are put side by side in a 2×2 grid arrangement. After this, you can click on the Silicon Mirror icon in the toolbar to view the kaleidoscopic effects.
It opens a new transparent window, you can move this window over the image stacks and it will produce the kaleidoscope effects. You can change the glass type between clear glass or reflective glass. You can change the number of reflections, number of mirrors, active fold location, whether a single tile view is to be used or a quad tile view is to be used, etc. We can also change the portal location and can choose from top left, top right, bottom left, and bottom right portals.
During the installation, the software installs a screensaver also. We can choose this Silicon Kaleidoscope screensaver from the Windows settings. This generates the kaleidoscope effect images in real-time on your screen. It makes use of some of the images that come with the software for this screensaver.
You can download Silicon Mirror & Kaleidoscope from https://www.torpor.com/smk.htm.