📘 Educational Explanation

Spherize Effect: Simulates the visual distortion seen through a spherical lens. Controlled by a refraction index that bends pixels outward and a radius that defines the size of the sphere. The image appears bulged as if viewed through a glass marble.

Radial Kaleidoscope Effect: Creates symmetrical patterns by rotating and mirroring triangular segments of the image around a center point. The angle slider defines the number of repeated segments (smaller angle = more segments), and direction gives the entire pattern a rotational offset for animation. The sample direction defines the initial sampling angle for symmetry, and can be controlled or animated to rotate continuously.

Square Buffer Pipeline: This app first stretches the input image to a square based on its diagonal resolution, applies the effects across this buffer, and crops the final rectangular output for canvas display. This ensures visual consistency across edge distortions and rotational symmetry.