I recently came across a reference to Aviary on Amber Mac’s blog and thought I should check it out. Since buying a MacBook I have been sans-Photoshop as I can’t really justify the cost for a Mac version of the software I have been using to create layouts and website designs for years. I have never been able to embrace GIMP, running it through the X11 windowing system on my MacBook frustrates me and I haven’t found a decent image editor that can replace Photoshop. Could a free online image editor be the solution I’ve been looking for?

What is Aviary?

Aviary is developing a suite of free online creative tools, each given the moniker of a bird all housed within the… er… Aviary. Included in the flock are tools for many different creative-types. Image, video and sound editors. Pattern generators, desktop publishing tools, layout tools and an interesting take on content licensing. By requesting a beta invite and stating in my request that I was focused on image editing I received access to Phoenix, an online raster image editor (à la Photoshop), and Peacock, an online algorithm-based pattern generator.

What Makes Aviary Different?

The philosophy behind Aviary is enabling “rich content creation and distribution”. You will be able to create a vector image in Raven, import it into the Phoenix raster editor and take the result to the Owl desktop publishing layout editor. From beginning to end you can generate a creative peice and take it straight to market, all without opening a hard drive-based program to do it. You can also choose to allow other Aviary users to edit your work to end up with a collaborative masterpiece. Each week Aviary features a “Collaboration of the Week”, where a starter image is posted and the Aviary users are given free range to create their own image using the original, or using another user’s derivative of the original.

Free, Online, Downloadable

Aviary plans to make these free online tools available as Adobe AIR downloads, which will no doubt make the programs faster than the web-only versions as well as cross-platform compatible. There are a lot of exciting things happening at Aviary.

Currently I have 5 invites to Aviary. If you would like to try it drop me a line in the comments!

Tags: Aviary, Design, Photoshop

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 at 11:30 am and is filed under Design, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.