Aviary's business model is more about providing lightweight photo editing capabilities to other tech companies through an SDK (software developer kit) than building their own apps. And they've been successful at this, counting as clients such heavyweights as Box, Walgreens, and even the top online photo site, Flickr. But iPhone users can take advantage of the company's capable, clearly designed photo editing features without having to muck about with an SDK, by installing this excellent iOS photo editing app.
Like Instagram, Aviary offers creative filters to perk up your pedestrian image, and like Snapseed, it also lets you fine-tune them with controls for brightness, contrast, colors cropping, and more. It doesn't include its own photo social network like Instagram, EyeEm, or BeFunky, but it does make sharing to the popular networks—Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Flickr—a snap. Like a lot of photo apps, you can buy more advance photo-enhancing effects as in app purchases.
Install
Unlike a lot of apps these days, Aviary is available in many more flavors than just iPhone: these include an HTML5 web version, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 8. The iOS app is compatible with any iOS 5 or later device, and takes advantage of the larger screen of the iPhone 5.
Interface
Despite offering more photo editing capabilities than competitors like Wood Camera or BeFunky, Aviary is easier to use, with a streamlined workflow from selection to image adjustment to enhancing to sharing. The app starts up show your Camera roll photos, and you can simply swipe through them just as in the default Photos app. Just five buttons grace the edges of this starting interface: Along the bottom you've got a Camera button, Edit this Photo (from Camera Roll), and Albums, to switch from Camera Roll. At the top are Settings and Share buttons.
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You actually get more control over the interface than in most iPhone apps: Settings let you change where each tool appears in the bottom menu that appears once you start editing a photo. One thing I liked about the editor was that I could unpinch to zoom in for a closer look—something surprisingly rare in iPhone photo editors.
Unlike Camera+ and Camera Genius, the Aviary app doesn't offer any extras to control snapping pictures; those apps let you do things like set self-timers or release the shutter when you clap, as well as zoom and use separate focus and exposure points. With Aviary, you get the same minimal control offered by the built-in iPhone Camera app.
Editing Photos
There are 16 editing and enhancing tools in all included in the app; you swipe through five at a time in the button toolbar along the bottom of the screen. Included among these are Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Sharpness—you might be surprised at how many iPhone apps have none of these, with Instagram the best-known. These Aviary tools show a flywheel control that lets you very precisely control their strength.
The first tool in the default layout is Enhance, which offers Auto, Night, Backlit, and Balance. These sometimes subtle correctors try to get the lighting right, and did improve my photos.
Instagram-Like Enhancement and Even More Effects
Aviary's Effects button leads to Instagram-like retro film looks and monochrome choices. There are 12 in all, but a good choice of in-app options let you add to these. Most of the effects have non-descriptive names, such as people's first names, which doesn't help much in selecting one. Two more effect sets come for free with an in-app upgrade—Classic, with a dozen looks, and H&M, which adds color swaths. Purchasable sets like Grunge, Street, Toy Camera, and Classic include six effects each and cost from $0.99 to $2.99. It's a clever model, because you always want to see what else you can do to make your picture look cool.
I like that once you use one tool, like one of these effects, you can go back and edit the photo more with any of the other tools, like cropping or brightness. This gives you a lot more control and customization than just applying a preset filter. One missing tool is tilt-shift, aka, selective focus. Free competitors like Instagram and Snapseed offer these nifty effects.
Stickers is another tool I don't see in every iPhone photo app. These let you overlay things like moustaches, eyeglasses, hats, speech bubbles, arrows, and other useful items on top of your photo. A decent selection of these is included free, but again you can bolster your supply with in-app purchases. Choices here include more moustaches and glasses, as well as "Memes"—colorful text overlays with mottos like "YOLO" and "Just sayin'."
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One cool extra in Aviary is the Meme tool, which lets you add text that looks like the cat photos with large block letters you've certainly seen on Facebook. You can also simply overlay text with the Text tool. You can move your words around, change their color and size, and even rotate them on three axes. But you don't get a choice of fonts, as you do in BeFunky.
The crop tool uses large touchable corner controls and offers preset aspect ratios, but no 8x10 and no golden ratio, which Wood Camera offers.
You even get some Photoshop Elements-like tools-blemish remover, red-eye remover, and teeth brusher. The first merely blurred the blemish and used a nearby color, so don't expect Photoshop-like texture matching. The tooth-whitener was effective but subtle enough not to make it look like your subjects have fluorescent lamps in their mouths. And the red-eye corrector did a nice job of darkening irises and pupils without smearing out beyond the area you want corrected, as some tools do.
Sharing
In addition to the usual online sharing targets for your Aviary-edited photos—Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and Tumblr—the app lets you send your work to a local Walgreens for printing. A 4x6 print costs a reasonable 29 cents.
A Full-Featured, Friendly iPhone Photo App
Though the Aviary iPhone app is partly intended as a demonstration of its maker's powerful photo API, it's a darned useful and full-featured app in itself—even if you don't spring for the extra effect filters and embellishments. With more basic photo tools than most similar apps, including teeth whitening and blemish removal, along with great usability, Aviary earns a high 4-out-of-5 star rating. Our Editors' Choice iPhone photo app, Snapseed, still manages to edge Aviary out with a bigger set of impressive editing and enhancing tools, such as tilt-shift. For a look at more iPhone photo apps, read AppScout's Top 5 Photo Apps for the iPhone.
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