professional-looking photos with a Canon IXUS camera?

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hi all! i recently used my 2-year-old Canon Ixus 850IS digital camera on my most recent vacation to the tropical island of Cebu in the Philippines. aside from posting for pictures of myself and with relatives and friends, i also took pictures of buildings and close-ups of things and i tried to take artistic pictures of them. i fiddled with the brightness (or exposure level) and manually adjusted the ISO settings, and 60% of the time, i finally achieved the professional-looking photographs that i've been trying to take for the past 2 years. however, 60% meant that 40% were not very successful. how about you guys? if you had an Ixus camera, or any other non-SLRs for that matter, what do you do to make your photos look like they were taken by a professional photographer and not a tourist-type digital camera? thanks in advance!