Aviary Review

Aviary promises to be a suite of online design tools. Currently only two of these tools are available, Phoenix and Peacock. Aviary is currently in invite only beta, but I was able to nab and invite to go in and play.



Phoenix is Aviary's bitmap image editor. It's an extremely versatile tool, and a great example of what is possible with online applications. It's certainly not on par with Adobe's Photoshop, but it's not aimed at the same market. Phoenix is definitely more consumer focused than Photoshop, which is aimed at the professional market.

Phoenix is currently in Alpha. That means it's not ready for production use just yet. Still, it's a very promising program with a lot of features already active. You have your standard filters like blur, and also layer based editing (which I've always thought was essential to any bitmap graphics editor). There are even "Layer Filters" which are much like Photoshop's Layer styles.



I also played around with Aviary Peacock, which they call a "Computer algorithm-based pattern generator". Basically what that means in practical purposes is that it is a program for generating patterns based on a system of Generators, Effects and Controllers. It is extremely easy to create complex patters by chaining together these various tools. The program allows you to do so with a visual layout, with "pipes" leading from one to the other, and eventually to the final image.



While I currently have no use for such a pattern generator, I immediately saw it's usefulness to both web designers and 3d artists as a way to generate backgrounds and textures.

In the future, Aviary promises even more tools, including an Audio Editor, a Vector Image Editor, and a Desktop Publishing Layout Tool. (The full list of tools is here.) In my opinion, Aviary has a bright future ahead of it, as long as they figure out a way to monetize the software. Charging a nominal fee for access wouldn't be out of line, and given the power of the tools, the ability to store the data created on Aviary's servers (for access anywhere and on any machine), and the fact that there's no software for the user to update or maintain on their local machine (other than Adobe Flash Player), I think Aviary will be a winner.