Aviary, the small New York-based startup with the ambitions of recreating Adobe Photoshop’s most popular design tools in the browser, has launched a simple, free tool, called Falcon, that lets you quickly grab and edit images within the browser. Falcon, since it is web-based and works in any browser, can be used on a Mac or PC. Skitch, another similar fast, simple editing tool, is a desktop app that only works on Macs. Both Skitch and Falcon offer a simple subset of tools which was previously only available in Photoshop. As we’ve said in the past, these simple tools are especially useful to bloggers and others who spend a lot of time manipulating and editing images on the fly.
The beauty of Aviary is in its Firefox plugin, called Talon, which let’s you grab a screen shot or portion of a screen at any time and automatically imports the image into Aviary’s browser-based editing platform. When you click on the icon on your browser when you are on a page you want to capture, you are given the choice of capturing a portion of the screen, the entire viewed screen, or the entire page (below the fold). The option of capturing the entire page is a useful; and a feature that Skitch currently doesn’t allow. Once you capture the image, Falcon gives you the option of editing the image on Aviary.com, saving the image to your desktop, copying it to your clipboard or hosting the image at Aviary.com.
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.
Whether you realize it or not, you’ve probably come across the handiwork of Worth1000, a site that invites readers to use their image-editing skills to do everything from crafting new logos, to creating vintage ads for modern products or adding monsters to otherwise tame photos. The site has run over 200,000 contests since its inception in 2002, and now has galleries teeming with hundreds of thousands of user-created images.
Now Aviary, the company behind Worth1000, is looking to give site owners a chance to run their own image-design competitions. The company has built a powerful suite of browser-based imaged editing tools, and is now launching a new site called w1k.com that helps users easily create their own online photo-editing contests. These contests can consist of anything from crowdsourced logo-design competitions to humorous celebrity-morphs (and everything in between), and could appeal to a broad range of publishers.
When we hear from Aviary it’s bound to be something entertaining and fun. The New York based company remains in private beta but adds to its suite of image manipulation products regularly. The newest tool is called Dodo, a web-based time machine.
A video demo is below. You upload an image to the service and it will “age” it based on user input. An example: upload a picture of yourself, tell it how many years out you want it to age you, tell it how much you drink and smoke, and not any planned plastic surgery. It will then show you what it thinks you’ll look like down the road.
Aviary says the tool isn’t just for fun - that it may also be useful for “tracking down long missing children,” and “determining if a girlfriend will end up looking like her mother.” Demo video below.
What’s the technology behind it? Well, it’s pretty close to magic. Anything is possible in early April, it seems.
When I first saw Aviary I called it an incredibly ambitious art project. Aviary is creating a online creativity ecosystem that consists of a Flash based graphics suite tied to a marketplace where artists can sell their creations.
For the suite, the New York based team of 12 has been developing over 14 graphics tools ranging from pattern generators to vector based graphic editors. They’ve now put the finishing touches on two of their main programs (image editor Phoenix and pattern maker Peacock) and are letting in TechCrunch readers in to play around with them.
I’ve been really impressed after playing around with the tools. While by no means a Photoshop master, the image editor Pheonix has all the functionality I’ve come to expect from Adobe’s image editor (drawing, smudging, layers, filters, etc.). Founder Avi Muchnick says it has the most important functionality of Photoshop 6 and is not meant to be a total replacement (see other online photo editors as well and even Adobe’s soon).
Instead it’s meant to do the majority of what you want to do with an image editor, but also benefit from easy integration with the other online tools. For instance, you can use their pattern generator, Peacock, to make textures for an image you’re editing in Phoenix. If you share the pattern publicly anyone else can do it too (eventually you’ll be able to sell it).
Public files can also be commented on by other users, and preserve a version history that lets anyone to go back and branch your work in a different direction. All the files generated with the tools are saved as .egg files on Aviary’s servers, making them easy to share and track the intellectual property rights of files generated from scratch or uploaded to the system.
Here’s a link to what people have already created on the platform. Here’s an example of the many directions one image can be edited. Below is an example of the suite in action.
Aviary is giving away 100 invites to TechCrunch readers who sign up for an early bird invite here. They’ll be handing them out by tracking referrals, so you need to click through the link. You can also share/put your name down on a waiting list for invites at InviteShare.
The guys behind Worth1000 and Plime have been tooling away at a new venture called Aviary (although it’s confusingly hosted at CreationOnTheFly.com). With Aviary, the New York based team is aiming at the rather ambitious goal of not only creating a marketplace for multimedia artwork, but a suite of robust collaborative online applications with which to create the works.
The obvious question is “why both tools and a marketplace?” As founder Avi Muchnick believes, both are needed for the other to be successful. They need a marketplace for creators to sell their works and encourage use of the tools. They need tools so they can confirm and maintain the copyright of the works created on the platform.
The lingering question is whether online tools will be of a high enough caliber to produce marketable content. So far, signs are pointing to yes.
When completed, Aviary will consist of 14 online tools of varying complexity: an image editor, color swatch generator, pattern generator, vector-based editor, 3D modeler, audio editor, music generator, video editor, desktop publishing tool, word processor, painting simulator, custom image product creator, photo analyzer, and file system to store it all on. Each of the applications is programmed in Flex, making them ready to meld with your desktop upon Adobe AIR’s public release. Adding an artsy twist, each tool will be named after a different bird.
All items created in these programs will be stored on their own file system called Rookry. From there, artists will be able to sell their creations on the open market. Even small pieces, such as patterns or sound effects will be marketable. If the works are made within Aviary, buyers will have the security of knowing they are buying an original work. If they incorporate outside content, they will be flagged as such. From within Aviary’s platform artists will also be able also create derivative works while maintaining attribution and royalty rights upon sale.
The team will be releasing the tools as they’re completed. They’re already showing some pretty serious results with their image editor (Phoenix), Vector Editor (Raven), and 3D editor (Hummingbird) outlined below:
Phoenix
Phoenix is like Photoshop without trying to replace it. You get a lot of the familiar features such as brushes, patterns, stamps, smudging, shapes, blending options, and more.
The Aviary team decided on a core feature set by polling their band of PhotoShop fanatics using Worth1000 to find Photoshop’s most frequently used features. The editor can work on an image of max dimensions of 2880 by 2880 pixels.
The editor does support importing and exporting images of familiar formats, but any Aviary work that includes an imported image not created in the suite will be marked as such in the marketplace. This will help alert buyers to the possibility that the creator doesn’t have full copyright over the work.
Raven
Raven is their vector based drawing program. It’s based on a lot of the design from Phoenix, but allows artists the flexibility of vector based drawing (e.g. easy scaling/rotation without losing quality). Raven will connect with Phoenix, allowing illustrations created in Raven to be rasterized and edited in Phoenix.
Click on the image to the right for a larger view.
Hummingbird
Hummingbird is their 3D editor designed completely in Flex. Right now they’ve just got a 3D model renderer along with some basic editing tools (element selection/deletion), but are working on a more robust UI for creating new models from scratch.
The hummingbird on the right was rendered with the engine in real time with a metallic gold skin.
Click on the image for a real time demo of the 3D rendering engine.
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