Digital Home Thoughts: Rich Online Imaging Tools From Aviary

Aviary is yet another Web 2.0 company that I haven't heard of, but they have some very compelling browser-based image creation and manipulation tools. The first of these, called Pheonix, is an image editing program (pictured above). The biggest noteworthy feature is the support of layers, which are neccesary for the more complex photo manipulations. Next, they have a "Visual Laboratory" tool called Peacock. They have a colour palette tool called Toucan, and a vector program called Raven. The tools are all Flash-based, which when functioning in full-screen mode can be fairly CPU intensive.

Aviary is also trying to crack the tough problem of Web 2.0 companies making money: they have a pricing plan that involves access to their entire suite of applications. The two pricing plans are $79.90 USD per year and $149.90 USD per year. And here's the rub: if you're a consumer, you'll probably just use the free version, or use other free tools on the market. Or even commercial tools - if you buy a copy of Photoshop Elements 7, which has more features for photo editing, you pay $99 once and can use it for as long as you want. So what about graphics professionals? $149.90 is cheap for someone who does this for a living, but in industries focused around Photoshop and Illustrator, file compatibility is important. I wish the people at Aviary the best, but this is going to be an up-hill battle for them, and the products are going to have to not only match the offline tools, but exceed them in features, in order to gain traction.