While people have been developing extensions for Chrome for a little while now, none were officially supported. But now that Google is reaching out to developers to start making these for real, we’re already hearing about some good ones. One such one was sent to us tonight by Aviary, makers of browser-based creativity tools.

Aviary’s new Chrome extension is simple, but very useful. Once you install it, it adds a little icon to the right side of the URL bar. Clicking on this icon gives you a drop down menu of options. Most give you easy access to Aviary’s suite of tools, but the first option is key. It’s the one that allows you to capture the visible portion of any web page you are on with one click. From there, the image is loaded into whichever Aviary tool you set as the default editor.

So, for example, if I use the Aviary Image Markup tool as my editor, I’ll capture the web page, and be moved into the editor in seconds. From here I can manipulate the screenshot and easily save it to Aviary. More importantly, I can save it to my desktop without having to save it to Aviary at all. This makes for one extremely fast and easy screen capture tool.

But the best part of Aviary’s extension is that it doesn’t slow down Chrome. While the actual Aviary editor takes up some of your CPU, the extension itself ads no bloat to the regular browsing experience. I actually have three extension installed right now and none are slowing Chrome (Chromium) at all. This gives me great hope.

A few notes about Aviary’s plug-in: First, it’s not available yet only because Google has yet to launch its Extension Gallery. Supposedly, that’s coming soon for end-users but for now extension support is limited to developers being able to upload their creations. Second, the extension works fine in Chrome for Windows (and I believe Linux), but to use it on the Mac you have to be using the latest build of Chromium (the newest dev build of Chrome for Mac doesn’t support it yet).

Aviary also makes a similar extension for Firefox, that has seen over 100,000 installs, we’re told. That version also features two features the Chrome extension doesn’t yet: Full page captures (not just the visible part of the page) and Flash capture support. We’re told both will be coming in an update to the extension.

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If you haven’t checked out Myna yet, you should. Aviary released it the other day, and it’s really impressive for software that is fully contained in the browser. It’s not quite as powerful as GarageBand, but most casual users probably don’t need all the bells and whistles that GarageBand provides. Most users will find Myna more than powerful enough, and actually, it seems quite a bit easier to get the hang of as a result of being slightly less complex.

But the really cool potential for Myna lies in using its API and getting some partnerships with bands to do remixes on the web. The first such partnership is with the band Major Lazer. They’re currently holding a contest between now and October 1 for whichever fan does the best remix. There will be one grand prize winner (who gets $500 among a bunch of other stuff) and five runners-up.

In a time when everyone is talking about falling music sales, and wonder if the recording industry as it’s currently constituted can survive, this sounds like a great way for bands to create a more interactive experience with their fans.

Again, Aviary makes this very simple to do. You load up the Myna app from Major Lazer’s website and it’s pre-populated with various musical elements of three tracks that you can remix. From there, it’s simply a matter of dragging and dropping elements to get the mix you want. Cool stuff.

Update: Here’s the link for the API information.

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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’s in-browser editing platform is similar to Skitch’s desktop app and adds much of the same functionality. You can add arrows and text to an image, as well as crop, rotate, and resize your image. Falcon also has a built-in color picker tool to extract web color values from images and screenshots. For more design power, you can port your image into 4 different powerful Aviary tools, including color editor, advanced image editor, effects editor and vector editor.

Once you are finished with editing your image, you can save the image as a PNG or JPG either on your desktop or host it on Aviary. Aviary Pro members can gain additional storage options like privacy and watermark control for $24.99 per year. Like with Skitch, images that are uploaded to your Aviary account can be commented by other users, and there are a number of options to embed that image in other websites or link to an image from other sites, like Twitter or Facebook. Aviary has also released the API for Falcon, so that any website can integrate the tool. The drawback of Falcon is that if you don’t use Firefox, the tool isn’t as simple as with the plug-in. You have to import a image into Aviary’s browser editing platform or or you can paste link into the platform to get the entire page imported in, which you can then edit.

Since we first covered the company, Aviary had kept most of its tools in private beta. Only four have become publicly available: Phoenix, an image editor along the lines of Photoshop; Peacock, a so-called “visual laboratory” for pixel-based images; Toucan, a color palette tool; and Raven, a vector-based image editor that mimics (and therefore competes with) Adobe Illustrator.

Adobe also released a simple, browser-based photo editing tool at Photoshop.com, but it is designed more as an application to edit photos as opposed to grabbing and editing items and screenshots from websites .

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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.

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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.

Users will be able to submit their entries either using Aviary’s online photo-editing software (which should be suitable for most people), or they can upload images from their desktop if they’d rather use software like Photoshop or Gimp. Users will be able to stir up interest in their submissions by sharing links through Email, Twitter, Facebook and other services, though contest administrators will be able to restrict these options. The Aviary team is also implementing the anti-cheating system it has developed for Worth1000, so the contests should be more accurate than a homegrown image-upload and voting system.

Aviary is offering a basic template for free that will be more than enough for most users. To generate revenue, it will also offer a premium option that allows website publishers to create customized templates and also includes a robust interface for stat-tracking and demographic information. For an example of how customizable these contest sites are, check out this fake contest, which shows off a TechCrunch-themed design along with some interesting ideas for alternate Crunchies statue designs (we like the real guy just fine, though). Other examples include a competition sponsored by EA for MirrorsEdge and this Dark Theme, which will be available to free users.

Aviary’s w1k.com contest creator seems poised to do well. Companies like EA benefit from the contests because they help generate user-interest while simultaneously getting what amounts to free image design, while smaller sites can use the competitions to increase engagement. The basic technology behind running one of these competitions may not be too difficult to reproduce, but Aviary also has its browser-based image editor, which makes the contests accessible to a much broader audience.

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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.

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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.

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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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