Aviary is a small New York startup with the ambitious goal of recreating (and expanding upon) Adobe’s most popular design tools in the browser.
Since we first covered the company about a year and a half ago, Aviary has kept most of its 15 planned tools (at least those that have seen development at all so far) in private beta. Only three have become publicly available: Phoenix, an image editor along the lines of Photoshop; Peacock, a so-called “visual laboratory” for pixel-based images; and Toucan, a color palette tool.
Now, Aviary has taken the lid off a tool called Raven as well. Raven is a vector-based image editor that mimics (and therefore competes with) Adobe Illustrator, a popular desktop application among digital artists whose work often makes it onto real paper. Like Phoenix, Raven doesn’t match its Adobe counterpart feature-by-feature but it does recreate Illustrator’s most essential functionality. And the results are pretty impressive; the pen tool and gradients in particular work just as they should, and the tool overall reaffirms Flex’s reputation as a suitable platform for desktop-like applications.
Is it good enough to convince veteran Illustrator users to switch? Probably not. But it may be enough to convince new designers to forgo buying Illustrator and try out Raven first. After all, Adobe charges a pretty penny for its creativity software and not everyone’s inclined to pirate it.
CEO Avi Muchnick seems keenly aware of the imprudence of calling Raven (or any of his other products) real competition for Adobe just yet, preferring to describe Raven as “the web app counterpart to Adobe Illustrator”. The thinking is that Illustrator users may want to load their files into Raven using its SVG import feature, after which they can make modifications and then release their work into Aviary’s online community. And the community does appear to be Aviary’s biggest selling point, at least until its productivity tools evolve. Artists can easily browse and modify each others’ work, and they can retain control over copyrights and sell their work online, if so desired.
Almost a year ago Adobe started making its own inroads into online creativity tools, releasing a photo editing tool at photoshop.com. Surprisingly, Adobe chose not to recreate Photoshop in the browser but rather to design a new tool with broader consumer appeal. This suggests that Adobe may leave the field open for Aviary to produce online products that are robust enough to entice creative professionals.
Aviary is still working to improve font support, bitmap-to-vector tracing, and support for export file types in Raven. An API will also be released next month that makes it possible to embed any of Aviary’s applications across the web. Interested parties can email this address.
Check out a video demonstration of Raven below.
I tried it out some time ago and although a bit limited compared to the original it actually is quite neat.
Excellent tool
Some other great online image manipulation tools I found include:
http://smartbab...-sites-for.html
# Photofunia: I used this site to create my avatar. A great site that lets you make some amazingly creative and sexy photo manipulations. I can guarantee that you will impress your date if you take a snapshot of her and then run it through one of Photofunia’s images. Developed by a creative team in Russia.
# Befunky: Change any photo into a Frank Milleresque image like in the movie. Very cool and sexy. Easy to use and incredibly beautiful results. Dveloped by a team based in one of my favourite countries, Turkey.
# Fotoflexer: Essentially an easy to use Photoshop equivalent for free. Several advanced options as well … including retouching photos. Run by a team based in Berkeley.
# Prezi: Powerpoint is like, so 2008. Try this service from Hungary. You will never go back to boring old Powerpoint again.
Anjali Sen
http://tinyurl.com/ahzvtb
I use Inkscape (free, cross-platform, and open source) for working with vector graphics.
Doing bitmap-to-vector tracing *well* is a hard problem. I use Vector Magic to do that (and that’s all it does). It has both a web version and a desktop version.
Interesting the [common Adobe] keyboard shortcuts (e.g., “A”, “V”, “Space”) are not supported. Curious to know if that was intentional, and if it is, the reason.
Not intentional – we’ll be expanding the shortcuts soon. We try to keep them consistent with Adobe as this will help train people to move between programs with little problem (which is beneficial not just to the end user, but to Adobe and us as well, as it means that a user can upgrade to Illustrator or perform a quick operation online without needing to relearn behavior).
Nice app for neat and fast desktop use… I personally use Pixelmator in my MAC which gives a blow shot answer to photoshop anyway… but a web app with that much power….. I like it.
They have Mario Klingemann working for them. That guy rocks pretty hard at pushing pixels with Flash.
I believe Aviary’s strategy was to recruit a bunch of the top Flash guys and roll their work into a single web suite. It still needs work, but they definitely have the talent.
i have never tried this. let me give a try first .
great. i look forward to it.
Cross-compatability with Illustrator via SVG imports is going to go a long way here. It would be nice to see the web-based end of this used for iterative deisgn processes, etc. Keep it up!
These are great for very casual use, but nothing I’ve seen and used comes close to the adobe suite for power users who are in there 7hrs a day. The products that seem to have feature parity have major usability and workflow issues.
It’s too bad actually, because CS4 is kinda crap. I just bought CS4 Design Premium for a whopping $1800 and it doesn’t give me the warm fuzzies you’d typically get after spending all that dough. Instead, I think, man… it’s too bad there’s no competition because this is highway robbery for a pretty mediocre product.
I’ve been using photoshop since the PS4 days (over 10 years) and illustrator and flash almost that long. Comes w/ the territory as a designer.
Recently used: beta tested the aviary products, pixelmator, inkscape, gimp, paint.net… and a host of other products over the years that I can’t remember.
After playing with it, I say it’s quite good actually.
Might be useful in our introductory vector graphic classes.
Nice.
I definitely agree this tool looks amazing.
We are living in a great era!
Great application, but isn’t there something to be concerned about in the strategy of trying to disrupt Adobe’s core business using Adobe’s own proprietary Flash platform?
Joyapp.com – web apps built in a day
great point!
There is a huge revenue disparity between Adobe’s developer tools and Adobe’s desktop centric creative tools.
If the Flash platform aspect becomes an business issue then Aviary can simply move to other cross-platform Internet-app developer environments such as Silverlight or Gears (yes, they lose a bit regarding the ubiquity of the Flash player base – but Silverlight and Gears are quick run-times to install for the end-users)
The irony isn’t lost on us (and I’m sure Adobe).
However, if you really think about it, what we do actually promotes the capabilities of Flash every time someone uses our apps and also, anyone we train in how to use our editors will ultimately become a ripe candidate to move on to more professional tools.
Adobe certainly won’t be losing existing customers who are willing to pay for desktop applications. If anything they might be gaining more customers who have been trained online.
And when/if you do become a threat, Adobe will likely just buy you up.
How ironic would that be?
The suite is awesome BTW keep up the great work.
Leaves a lot to be desired. Flash apps have the horrible feeling when you work with them.
“Flash apps have the horrible feeling when you work with them.”
WTF is that supposed to mean!!
cool from a “can we do it?” sense, but who is the realistic target audience? who are the graphic designers who want or need to edit in a web browser?
Hi whoopie,
The target audience are all amateur designers (people who would want to try out design) but do not have access or the money to try out professional design tools.
There are 15x the number of hobbyist designers than there are professional designers.
It’s our company mission to make creation accessible to everyone and we’d rather start with the non-professional population where we see plenty of market opportunity.
Our decision to develop web apps instead of installable desktop apps is a function of our mission to be accessible: We want to remove all barriers to creation. If there is nothing to install for an end-user, they are so much more likely to begin creating.
I use Inkscape (free, cross-platform, and open source) for working with vector graphics.
Doing bitmap-to-vector tracing *well* is a hard problem. I use Vector Magic to do that (and that’s all it does). It has both a web version and a desktop version.
Great appication these guys are wonderful.
i like it
Love the app… really cool
gd app…
gd app…
They have some interesting apps and this one is definitly cool.
I was looking for such online vector image editing tool. Thanks TC.
this is very cool
Professionals will definitely continue to use Illustrator.
Thanks for the contribution Captain Obvious.
i wonder why adobe wouldn’t consider acquiring Aviary and rebranding their efforts as online counterparts to the Creative Suite. would make strategic and business sense for both companies IMHO.
Why would you use Aviary if you have access to Illustrator?
Think before you post.
You wouldn’t of course.
But how many people have $500 (or whatever) for illustrator or $2000 for the whole CS suite?
You should heed your own advice and think it through.
Wow, amazing! I was blown away with Pixlr, the Photoshop look-a-like online image editor, but this is much more complex. An online vector editor? Great work Aviary team!
Initially I didn’t think they could do it, I went as far as to call the 3d editor vaporware. But I was wrong, these guys rock. They have hired some of the flash guys around and should be considered serious contenders in this space. Best of luck to to them.
dsfdf
thanks you..
Raven looks insanely cool, BUT… I don’t think it was the *first* vector graphics editor for the web. I’d like to think that DoInk.com can lay claim to that… we’ve been in a public alpha for a number of months now (flying under the radar) and have a decidedly different audience than Aviary. Still, our editor is a fairly robust vector graphics editor that compiles out to SWF!
Thank You..
thanks you..
Really nice site you have here. I’ve been reading for a while but this post made me want to say 2 thumbs up. Keep up the great work
the only competition is going to come from another desktop app, like inkscape. desktop apps are still required for the monster files graphic designers deal with.