Google Image Search is already a great way to find images from all corners of the Interwebs, and it just got more interesting with a new way of visualizing results. It's called Image Swirl. Searching for an image with swirl will give you a list of 12 images, and clicking on each one brings up a cluster of related pictures. Picking one of those will spin the wheel around and give you even more to look at.

This new way of exploring images may be more fun than it is useful, but it does definitely deliver the goods. If you're a visual thinker, it's probably a quicker way to browse results than the existing "similar images" link in Google Image Search. The underlying technology for Image Swirl comes from Similar Images and Picasa's face recgonition features. If you want to give Image Swirl a spin (har har) it's available in Google Labs now.

[via Official Google Blog]

Spectives is a new way of following sites visually, by filtering new images as they're posted. You can subscribe to one site, or create a themed collection. When the sites update, your collection will update. Clicking on any image takes you to the source page, so you can read the post that goes along with it. It's a simple idea, and the execution is well-done in terms of both usability and visual appeal.

You don't have to sign up for an account to search or browse collections, but it does have advantages. You can make your own collections and add favorites to your Spectives homepage as tabs for easy access. Although Spectives seems like an alternative to RSS, you can also get RSS feeds of your collections if you prefer to take in your visual content that way. The only minor issue I have with Spectives is that it frames sites when you click through an image to see the original post. I don't think anyone likes toolbars, so an option to open in a new tab instead would be outstanding.

UPDATE: Spectives does actually have an "open in new tab" option, if you're logged in. You can find it in your settings.

If you want a bit of text to be human-readable, but not read or indexed by bots, TxtNinja has got you covered. It converts your text to a GIF, with customizable size, font and color. Potential uses include concealing your email address from spammers, sending sensitive information over IM, and getting around text filters on forums.

The downside of TxtNinja is that the choices of fonts and colors are very limited, and they aren't common web fonts, either. Your TxtNinja GIF, unlike a real ninja, is unlikely to blend in with its surroundings. This isn't a particularly big deal, though, and you can use it to your advantage if you happen to want your text to stand out.

Adobe is ditching the free version of Photoshop, the Album Starter Edition, and promoting its web-based version of Photoshop at Photoshop.com instead. The move is sure to annoy devotees of desktop apps, who now have to shell out the money for Photoshop Elements, which is now the cheapest (supported) desktop version of Photoshop. On the other hand, the web app can be used from any machine, and offers 2GB of free storage.

Storage is upgradeable for a fee, and there's an AIR app to handle syncing between Photoshop.com and your desktop. Adobe's also pushing a "plus membership" to Photoshop.com, with a few extra features, including templates. Photoshop.com is extremely easy to use for basic stuff like tinting a photo, adjusting levels, or removing red eye, but if you're a slightly more advanced user, the upgrade to Elements might be worth your money.

[via CNET]

SmillaEnlarger is a single-purpose app that enlarges images without leaving them blocky and indistinct. Its algorithm obviously isn't going to do a perfect job of filling in the details, but it draws smart curves that actually look good at large sizes. Just as importantly, it eliminates the artifacts and pixelation that usually show up in enlarged images.

The display features the original image and the enlarged result side-by-side, so you can easily see which part of the source image you've selected, and you can crop and reposition as necessary. You can adjust the size of your output image either by using a slider or by entering the target dimensions. SmillaEnlarger is not a full-featured image editor, but there are a few options for adjusting sharpness and noise. It's a free app, but it would be worth paying for to anyone who has to manage a lot of frustratingly tiny photos.

I'm a huge fan of the AMC TV show Mad Men. My wife and I have gone as far as making ourselves gin martinis to sip while watching the show, though I haven't yet tried an Old Fashioned. If you're as much of a fan of the show as we are, check out AMC's new Mad Men Yourself site.

Just like the site that lets you create a South Park character with the distinctive features you choose, Mad Men Yourself lets you create a stylized version of yourself in the vein of the late-60's era when the show is set. You have your choice of hairstyles, clothing options, and even accessories, all perfectly appropriate for the period.

While these sites are simply blatant marketing efforts intended to raise awareness for the shows they represent, I think this is marketing at its finest. Give us something fun to play with that lets us associate with the show, and lets us take away a little creation that somehow feels uniquely ours, even though it's simply one of a set number of overall options. Clever, and a win-win for the user and the network.

Now excuse me while I try to find a way to make myself look a little more like Don Draper.

Aviary, maker of excellent web-based creative tools with bird-themed names, has done it again. The latest addition to their impressive collection is an easy-to-use web app for taking screenshots of any webpage. Just put the URL of the page into your address bar after http://aviary.com/ and you're good to go.

Once you've got a page open in Aviary, you can crop and edit it online. The standard brush, text and shape tools you're familiar with from other image editing programs are available, so you might be able to get away with doing everything you want on the web instead of resorting to Photoshop.Two caveats: you'll need to sign up for an Aviary account to save your work, and editing results may vary if you use the CPU-intensive "advanced editing" features.

[via Lifehacker]

Using Psykopaint is as easy as uploading a photo and messing with some of the effects sliders on the side to adjust your brush. Don't worry that there's no way to pick colors, your brush will automatically grab them from your photo. There are sliders for both minimum and maximum, which makes your brush unpredictable and the result more organic. If you set a wide range for brush size, for example, each stroke could end up being a completely different width.

To see what some very serious Psykopainters have come up with, check out the site's gallery. There's some strange, beautiful, and spooky artwork there.

Psykopaint is currently free, but a premium desktop version is in the works.

Changing a desktop image on a Mac is no big thing. You can open System Preferences from the Apple menu or the Applications directory, or you can go straight to the desktop prefpane by right-clicking on your desktop. Changing the picture you see when you log in should be just as easy, but it's not. If you want to learn the Terminal commands to do it, then more power to you. For the average user, there's Loginox.

Loginox is an app with a simple drag-and-drop interface for swapping out your login image. That's literally all it does, but that's definitely enough. The only way it could work better is if the developers rewrote it as a prefpane, or if Apple decided to incorporate it into the existing desktop/screensaver settings.

[via Lifehacker]

Sometimes you want humans to be able to read some information -- like your email address, for example -- while disguising it from bots that might be automatically collecting it. One way to do it is by displaying the info as an image, instead of as text, like Facebook does with email addresses. HideText gives you a quick way to do that.

HideText has two modes for converting text to images. One is a plain text box, with a choice of only two fonts and a few sizes, but you can enter whatever text you want, and it will get the job done. The other is an email-specific mode that includes your provider's logo as part of the image. It works with most major email services, like Gmail, Yahoo, and MSN. Either way you use it, you end up with your text concealed from Googlebots and things that could potentially be more malicious, like spammers.

Pixelmator has earned a following by doing the tasks most people use Photoshop for, but doing them much cheaper. That's truer than it's ever been in the new version 1.4, which adds a new painting engine, new brushes, and support for Photoshop brush formats. If you're a professional photographer, Photoshop CS4 might be worth $700 to you, but if you're someone who just needs powerful drawing and image editing tools, Pixelmator's $60 price tag looks pretty tempting.

With Pixelmator's existing tablet support, and the new brush customization features, you should be able to use Pixelmator for just about any drawing task. It's compatible with practically every image format, and has lots of intuitive little shortcuts that make it behave the way you'd expect from a good Mac app. The main gripe I've seen from commenters on the Pixelmator blog is the lack of a Photoshop-like "save for web" feature. Word on the street is that it will implemented in the next version, but that one feature should hardly deter you from checking out this great app.

If you need a punchy visual element to spruce up your website, you might consider TinyTag. The holiday season is nearly upon us (check out the gift guides we've been posting here on Download Squad), so 'tis the season for colorful tags. TinyTag makes it really easy to generate one. Enter your text, choose a color, size and alignment, and that's it.

Try line-breaking the text of your tag to adjust the size of each word. Once you've got it right, you can export to Flickr or Imageshack, and use the tag wherever you want. The simplicity of TinyTag is also its downfall, in a way. It would be nice to have more colors and typefaces available. Fortunately, the tags look pretty good as they are.

There are plenty of online image editors out there, but it can be tough to find the right one. If you're looking for a few filters, a bit of layer support, and a decent range of tools, Pixlr might be the one you want. You'll be familiar with its tools from using desktop apps like Photoshop and The Gimp, but it's rare to see so many advances options in a web app.

Some of the Pixlr perks that surprised me: opacity sliders! Layers and transparency! The collection of filters includes halftones, scanlines and pixelation. Common (but useful) features like hue/saturation, resizing, and brightness/contrast are also intact. Next time you find yourself on a computer without Photoshop, you might also find you don't need it.

Polaroid photos are a lot of fun, and they're a big part of the history of photography. When Polaroid film was discontinued, I thought I would never have as much making photos again. Maybe I won't, but Poladroid lets me get close. Drag and drop a photo, and Poladroid will spit out a Polaroid, complete with sound-effects and the experience of watching the image slowly develop.

Poladroid preferences include adding stripes to the image or the frame and changing the amount of rotation on the pics Poladroid creates. You can save Poladroid images either right-side-up or rotated. The only request I have to make Poladroid better is a plugin for Photo Booth, to let you shoot Polaroids with a webcam. Although this app is only available for Mac right now, a PC version is supposed to be coming in November.

If you need a quick way to round the corners of an image but hate messing with a full-blown image editor, then make sure you bookmark RoundMyCorners. Similar to other apps like this we've covered before, it's a very basic online tool but it works exactly as promised.

Simply select an image from your computer then choose your options. Corners can be rounded from 1 to 10 pixels and customized with just about any color you can think of. Decide if you want a reflection included, what format you want the image saved as (PNG, JPEG, or GIF), then let RoundMyCorners do its thing. The final image will download automatically to your desktop, with "rounded" thoughtfully provided in the file name.

This is a fantastically handy tool, but there are a couple of small improvements I'd like to see. A preview function would be terrific, as would the ability to name the file before it's downloaded. The developer says additional functionality is on the way, so let's hope these are two features that make the cut.

There's nothing flashy or fancy about this Web site, but RoundMyCorners a great tool to get the job done.