Free fun photo effects
If you want to have a bit of fun with your digital portraits, the Photo505.com site lets you apply some great special effects to them for free.
First up, you need to pick from the dozens of effects on the home page by clicking on one — you can make yourself into a Playboy covergirl, become the face of the Mona Lisa, grace a billboard, find yourself on the front of Paris Hilton’s T-shirt, reinvent yourself as an astronaut, and a whole lot more.
Once you’ve chosen your special effect, click on the Browse button and navigate to the image you want to use — depending on the effect you’ve chosen, you’ll get a better result if you pick an image to upload that is sympathetic in orientation to it (for instance, if you choose the Mona Lisa template, try for a head shot that is looking slightly to the left).
The site will then apply the special effect to your image and display the result. If it’s a keeper, click on the ‘Save to disc’ button to save it to your computer. You can also give the generated pic a rating between one and 10, one being bad and 10 being perfect.
Your image needs to be in JPG, PNG or GIF format and no more than 10,240K in size. If your image file is too big, you can resize it in your favourite photo-editing software.
Gail Lipscombe has worked for some of Australia's hottest tech magazines for over 10 years. In her blog, she focuses on demystifying technology, gadgets and the web for average consumers.