Superimpose Your Face Into Other Photos With Photo505

I showed you a cool website last week that lets you superimpose your face in the place of someone else’s on fake magazine covers. Some of you wrote in asking how you could do the same thing with other magazines or even pieces of art.

Now I have found a website that will let you do just that! Check out Photo505 .

Once you get there you will see what we are talking about. After all a picture is worth a thousand words right? There are lots of pictures on the home page. Each of these images is a template. Your picture can replace the one shown in each template. In other words you will be putting yourself (or someone else) into the picture…

So upon arrival you will see a screen similar to this:

Each of those pictures has the same person’s face imbedded into it. Now the site lets you upload an image and superimpose your face over the one that is there. Are you following me? Let me show you how it works. Simply select one of the squares with a picture in it.

I choose the Andy Warhol-like tomato soupesque shot and was ready to rock and roll. After selecting your template you will need a image to upload. I suggest cutting up a digital picture of yourself and saving it as a PNG 8 or another small format meant for the web.

Hit that big orange browse button and if you want to show your finished image to the world do not uncheck the show my photo in gallery button. On the other hand if you are a fugitive from the law or are in hiding, UNCHECK this box to NOT make your image PUBLIC. If you are unsure of what you want UNCHECK the box just to be on the safe side.

I browsed on over to my picture. This is what I used:

Photo505 worked for a minute and then spit back my compiled new image. This is what I got back:

How cool is that? And very simple too! When it is done you will get links to socialize your link, save it to your local machine and hotlink as well as direct links so you can plaster your new found favorite image every where!

I was hooked. So now how about a Grand Theft Auto wanted poster with my face on it? Well that is what I tried next. Lets go and have a looksie at what that produced:

Are you loving this yet? I am so I continued on… next up was Russian President Medvedev. How would I look when I superimpose my face on his picture? Well guess what – we are going to find out shortly!

This one had me select my face from my image with a picking tool. I sesized it by moving the arrow into the bottom right corner and dragging. Once I was done I continued on…

Then the web site spit back my image:

Not the best one but very funny! Check out 505Photo for your own private photo placing web site.

Pick 3 Icon Changer Programs To Customize Your Folders By Color

How boring is yellow? The color brings on a state of yellow blindness when you have been staring at it for a decade. But ever since I can remember, that has been Microsoft’s color of choice for its folders. Vista has brought in some changes, but for us Windows XP users it’s the same old default without resorting to a total change of our icons. We can change icons but we fall short at changing its colors.

Changing the colors of our folders has certain visual advantages. Other than the superficial visual appeal, different colors for different folders can serve as visual tags. We can color code folders according to importance (for instance, red for red hot documents) or say, according to contents (green for country music, orange for grunge?) or whatever strikes our fancy.

Looking at a bunch of yellow folders can make us unsighted as to the true value of the folders. And it’s quite easy to inadvertently delete the wrong folder. With color labeling, we can easily make the important ones standout amidst the sea of yellow.

So, let’s begin to paint our folders in any colors other than yellow, with these three free applications.

iColorFolder

iColorFolder (ver. 1.4.2) is a small program that lets us color Windows XP folders with a right click. Choose from 7 different colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Pink and Gray) or eight differently colored folder icons. Selecting a new color is a cinch. Just right click on the selected folder and select Color Label to go into the sub-menu with the seven colors. And if you hanker for the old yellow, you can go back to it easily by selecting None.

iColorFolder also comes with three skins – Agua, Mac OS X and Vista. Additional folder skins are available for download in a 7MB pack. The skins can be easily applied with the installed Skin selector. On un-installation, all icons return to the same ol’ yellow.

The only two negatives I could observe were its tendency to realign my desktop icons when they weren’t auto-arranged. The other peeve relates to the lack of skins. But beyond this, iColorFolder is a simple color labeler for our folders.

iColorFolder is an Open Source project and supported by Windows XP.

Folderico

Folderico (ver.3.7.2) is another program built for Windows XP just to give it some touch of color. Folderico is quite similar to iColorFolder but it has its individualistic pluses.

Using Folderico, we can browse to the target folder and select any icon to apply from the five icon libraries provided. A further bit of customization can be added by putting in a custom tooltip for the folder that gets displayed with a mouse hover.

Additional Folderico themes (i.e. icon libraries) can be downloaded from the website. Using an associated program called ICL Builder (Beta), we can create ICL-files from standalone ico files.

Right click integration is a matter of choosing the choice theme and setting it. We can opt for one theme and set it to apply on folders using the right click context menu. The best feature of this little free software (apart from the tooltip customization) is that it stores the folder’s new icon within the folder itself. So, if we transfer the folder to another computer it will retain the new icon.

Folderico is a free software and supported by Windows XP.

StyleFolder

Customizing a folder’s icon is just one feature in the repertoire of StyleFolder (ver.1.0.3). It goes one up on the first two programs by letting us customize the entire folder starting with its icon.

Let’s start with changing the icon – StyleFolder does not offer any unique sets of icons but we can use it with any available (or downloaded) icon resources.

The folder can be given its own ‘wallpaper’ using any picture as a background. Set contrasts within the folder by giving the sub-folders names their own color. Like Folderico again, you can change the folder’s info tip. Right click integration makes the whole process easier and if going back to square one is easy with a click.

Again, the best thing about this freeware (like Folderico) is its ability to keep the look ‘permanent’ even with a change in folder location, as the customizations are stored within the folder itself.

StyleFolder is a free software and supported by Windows XP.

As with all things related to customization, the ultimate goal is to create an intuitive system for ourselves. These three are just a few among the many tools which help us to change a bit of our Windows user experience.

Probably, Varun’s post on 10 Tools to Overhaul Your Windows Interface would make good reading for those bored with timeworn milk-and-water looks of our PCs. If you happen to read his post, then do also click through to the mention of Rainbow Folders , another of the ilk we talked about here.

Are you caught up in colors and customizations? Or do you like your yellows just the way they are?

Convert A File To HTML Instantly With File2.ws

File2.ws allows us to convert almost any type of file into an HTML webpage with zero knowledge necessary in any web language or programming skills. This is awesome for someone to share a document or song with the world or a group of people.

If you get a email with a Word document attachment all you have to do is upload it to File2.ws and it will convert a file to HTML and shoot back the link.

Let’s check out how it works.

You start off by visiting their website. You will see a page that looks like this:

All it takes to create a web page is to point that browse box to your local file and let it upload to their server. You can convert the following file types:

• image/photo files (jpeg, gif, png, svg…)
• audio formats (mp3, ogg…)
• documents (doc, pdf, odt, txt, rtf, ppt…)
• programming source code (java, php, cpp…)
• web documents (html, htm, swf…)
• archive (zip, rar, tar…)
• video, fonts, chemical file formats and more

How awesome is that? I started with a Word document that was formatted and included highlighting. Let’s see how it was handled. Hit browse and find your file. Then hit open.

You will see the filename filled into the box. There is a 15MB file max then hit the start conversion button. The file will upload to their site and the rest of the process is automatic.

Once your file has been successfully transferred to their site you will see a success screen with a link to your new webpage containing your document’s contents.

If you click on the link it will take you to the page. It should appear identical to your original with the exception of the Adsense or Bidvertiser ads at the top of your document directly under your title.

Next up let’s upload a MP3 and see how that handles. I threw it a old “Tribe Called Quest” song called Start it up. It took longer to upload then the Word document that’s for sure. It took about 11 minutes to upload but then the track came back embedded into a website. Fearing copyright infringement I will not post the link to the track but here is the link to my Word document that contains no sensitive data.

I can think of hundreds of users for this free website including showing a client a proof, showing a document, Excel sheet, Powerpoint document, home movies…. I mean the possibilities are endless. the site goes on to talk about its features. I figured I would post them up so you can see them as well:

• Fastest download speeds
• No download limits
• No CAPTCHA codes
• Multiple simultaneous downloads and uploads
• Unlimited page bandwidth
• No sign up required
• No software to install
• Link directly to the generated web page

I can say the download speeds are WAY better than the upload speeds but what we here at Make Use Of LOVE is the no signup and software to install. This makes this site very versatile.

Do you have a similar application that you use? We would love to hear about it? Maybe you have some creative uses for this service? Leave them in the comments and don’t worry you won’t be judged (maybe a little!)

Watermark

So after spending the day snapping like crazy, the photographer comes up against a new problem – copyright. As a freelance writer, I discovered my work stolen by two websites on two separate occasions when playing with CopyScape. The feeling of anger and to be honest, helplessness is awful.

What can you do? It’s the internet and tracking down someone is like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, with photographs the creators can protect them by adding in a watermark that will stop people from stealing their work.

A great (and free) online tool I found that can do this is a photography website called Watermark. This has a good free account option with the ability to upgrade to the premium account if you so wish. The free account does all you would really need. You can mark multiple photos at once and you can customise the watermark with different text, colours, size and effects as seen in the screenshot.

The only bad parts to the free account that you would notice is that a picture cannot be any larger than 0.5Mb which shouldn’t obstruct you much if you’re only posting them online. Also, it doesn’t save your watermark for when you come back later.

Icon Finder

I find myself using the same crappy buttons on websites because that is all I have. Everyone knows that buttons and icons are a integral part of any website. So it’s always back to the drawing board and start making new icons!

Time and time again I have to create custom icons and buttons for clients. Now with IconFinder that is a thing of the past. IconFinder is a search engine that will return icons or png files of free website icons. They allow you to change the background of each from either black, white or transparent as well as filter results for a commercial website or just for personal use.

Let’s take a look at Icon Finder:

Just like any other search engine the search bar and options are at the top. Type in a search term and hit that search button. It will then search through their 109,067 free website icons and 206 icon sets. Not too shabby for a new site.

After hitting that search button you will be shown your results. They will look like this:

Now you can click on one to download or view it but check out these features. Click on the transparent or black button under background color and watch the free website icons change to meet your requirements:

You can also narrow down your results to only show commercial images or ones you can use personally by hitting this:

Once you see the image you want to download click on it and it will bring up another screen that looks like this:

You see from this screen that you can grab the PNG file or the ICO file. It also has the dimensions – in this case it is 128×128 – a nice size for an icon. There is a link to show all icons in this set and tags/ratings.

When we click on the show all icons in this icon set button we get this:

These images are free for commercial use! WOOT! That means I do not need to pay any royalties or fees to use these in a website that makes someone money. I can’t express how awesome this is. Consider this the equivalent of Creative Commons for icons!

I ran a few other searches before I bounced, including this left arrow search:

These icons are great for small buttons designating back or forward.

The site is pretty new and I can only assume that as time goes on the site will get bigger and be filled with more and more icons. If you create icons I am sure you can get some recognition by uploading them to their site. You can browse all those sets by hitting the browse sets button.

That will take you to a page that looks like this:

You can then click on the entire set and view all of the icons in it. This is great for sticking with a static theme throughout the website.

Where do you grab your icon files from? We would love to hear about more icon download sites in the comments! Don’t be shy guys!