Aviary doesn’t do anything radically new when compared to the usual photo editing apps on the App Store. But what it does manage very well, is to present you with all the features you will ever need in a photo editing app with the ‘best’ possible interface on iOS. It has a huge set of features comprising of the usual photo filters, frames, stickers and every other option you might expect from an iOS photo editing app, along with some interesting one-touch enhancement options, a very cool splash mode editing, text tool and more options which includes even a basic meme mode.
Apart from providing you with a pretty solid in-built library of photo filters, stickers and frames, Aviary also lets you buy additional packs from their in-app store. The cool thing about their photo filters store is that, it shows a live preview of your current picture processed with the filter you are about to purchase, instead of displaying some stock photo as an example.
The app has an extremely simple yet beautiful interface which has been given a stunning redesign specially for iOS 7 users. On launch, it presents you with photos from the camera roll, and when you pick one, it has all the editing modes listed as buttons on a scroll-able bottom bar. On tapping any of them, the bottom bar changes to show the respective options available for manipulating each editing mode.
The ‘Enhance’ mode has just three options – Hi-Def, Illuminate and Color Fix, but they magically make all your photos appear instantly better with the touch of a button. The splash mode converts your photo to gray-scale and selectively lets you reveal colored areas of the original picture. What is even cooler, is the ‘Smart Color’ brush in the splash mode, which edge detects automatically to compensate for your obviously not so precise finger movements. It is a must try feature for everyone who uses Aviary.
All the other editing modes like crop, image adjustments, sharpness, red-eye removal, blemish/whiten brushes and few more features stay faithful to the simplicity of the overall interface. You can also tap on the image anywhere when not inside any of the editing modes to instantly compare with the original image you started with before the editing process began.
Leaving the above features aside, Aviary also lets you configure your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Tumblr accounts to quickly share after you are done with the editing. You can also email or open the picture directly on Instagram. Just in case you find yourself using only some of the features often, and want to avoid unnecessary scrolling esp. on your iPhone screen bottom bar, they also let you re-arrange the tool order and even disable them in the in-app settings menu which I found to be pretty handy.
Overall Aviary is, without a doubt, the ‘one-stop app’ for all your basic photo editing needs on the iOS. It is available as a universal app for Free on the App Store and I recommend you to try it immediately as you will never go back looking for any other photo editing app, at least for a while. Finally, Aviary also gives a free SDK for app developers, using which all their amazing editing modes can be integrated and made available on any other app!
App Details:
Website | Download URL | Price: Free