You can make a link out of something by throwing in
[a href= (web address here) ] (The words you want here) [/a]
Only replacing the ] [ square brackets with pointed ones ><
I don't know what part you leave out if you want to make the address and the text part the same, since I always use the feature to plant links directly into the text of my posts.
For everyone else's benefit, I linked that biz here, Farnsworth you know what you're talking about.
EDIT: as for images, I can't quite remember that process, but it'd best to avoid throwing too many of those around unless they are entirely awesome and necessary, like the cabbage-thing from the formating thread