How to Add Animated Effects to Your Pictures with XiberPix

You can add some effects like raindrops, water reflection... into immobile JPEG or BMP files to make it animated. This can be done easily with XiberPix. Your boring JPEG files will be turned into moving swf, gif or avi files.

XiberPix provides four softwares to create animated pictures: Squirlz (1.57 MB), Squirlz Lite (1.46 MB), Squirlz Morph (1.40 MB) and Water Reflection (1.77 MB). Those are free and compatible with all versions of Windows. Because the usage of those four are very similar, I will only introduce you the way to use Sqirl Morph and Water Reflection.

1. Sqirl Morph:

Squirl Morph will combine your two or three image together into only one image. This is one of the good methods to create funny pictures. At first, download the program here. After installing and activating the program, click Files > Open to locate the picture you want to change. The picture will be displayed in the main window. Go to Tile > Untile Windows to arrange the selected pictures. Choose "Add Control Points" (green plus symbol) and then, click on where you want to make the effect. If you do not satisfy with the position, you can choose "Move Control Point" (black arrow sign) to reposition the effect place. The period of each loop can be adjusted by clicking "Period of Animation" and changing the frame quantity (from 2-1000). Next, click "Morph/Warp" to check your result at "Review" window. Finally, you can save your animated picture as *.swf, *.avi or *.gif file.

2. Water Reflections:

You can download "Water Reflections" here. As it is named, Water Reflections create animated rippling pool of water in your image. The usage of Water Reflections is a slightly different from Sqirl Morph. At first, open the file by clicking Files > Open (Similar to Squirl Morph). Then, click "Start Creating Outline" to mark where you want to create effect on your picture. Right-click when you are done with marking. Next, choose "Rain/Snow and Ripples Combination". You can click "Run Animation" to test your result. Similar to Sqirl Morph, you can save the picture as *.swf, *.avi or *.gif file.

The other two software (Squirlz and Squirlz Lite) are also very as interesting as the two that I introduced. You can download Squirlz here and Squirlz Lite here. "Squirlz" is also compatible with Windows Vista. They bend, fold and distort the image after the effect is added. The process is very alike "Sqirl Morph" and "Water Reflections" program. Each of them has different effect and creates unique appearance to your picture. However, they all change your picture from immobilized to lively. You can use those program to create logo, photographs for your work. Especially, it would be great to use those software to create e-greeting card for your friend and family.