Computer Tips From A Computer Guy

Posted: 09 Mar 2011 03:45 AM PST

Finding new, wacky ways to impress friends with photos and other images is a popular use of our favorite social networking sites. While new ideas appear every day, most image enhancing Web sites are one-trick only, leaving them easily forgotten after a user uploads an image or two.

Image Embellisher is a site with several image tricks that require little to no image editing knowledge.

Choose the image embellishment you like best from the list on the right of the Image Embellisher page, care of Chami.com's HTML Kit. Choices include cube, disc, wave, glass cube, sphere, marble shadow, cylinder and transparent globe. All of these effects take a single image and tile it in the specified design.

Next, click the Choose File button to select a file for the special effect. Any GIF, JPG or PNG will do, but you must resize the image to less than 300K before uploading it or the service will simply not work.

Select a size for your embellished image. In our test, images of 500×500 or bigger turned out best.

Click the Send to the Image Embellisher button to create your image.

Within a few seconds, a 100×100 preview of your image appears towards the bottom left of the screen. Just below the image is a link to download it at its full resolution. Click the link to save the file. You will need to unzip the file before using it.

The best thing about the service is its speed and ease—absolutely anyone can use Image Embellisher. However, the image size restriction is a problem; even the lowest quality cell phone cameras take photos bigger than 300 KB. For those who are not advanced photo editors, try using an online tool like PicResize.com before using Image Embellisher.