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The Deck advertisements only appear on Aviary's blog sections (both product blog and idea blog), not within the Aviary website (or applications as you work).
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We've been extremely fortunate to surround ourselves with team members, advisers and partners of the highest caliber in terms of their experience, reputation and accomplishments. Our new adviser, Patrick Lor is no different, having been the first employee at the very successful iStockPhoto.com in 2001, where he served as EVP and director until its sale in 2006. Together with founder Bruce Livingstone, he turned a community of photographers into an innovative and disruptive business model where the community could profit together with the company.
And a successful model it is. In 2006, iStockPhoto sold to Getty Images for $50 million. Last year, iStockPhoto had $72 million in revenue, sharing $20.9 million of that with its community. Amazing. It's exactly that kind of cooperative partnership with the artistic community that we're attracted to.
Oh and in case you are wondering: Patrick is the caricature circled in red from our About page:
We're super excited to announce that we are winners in CNet's 2008 Webware 100 Awards in the Publishing and Photography category! 
I've got to admit that the idea of bragging about winning an intangible award makes us feel a little weird, especially as I'm not normally a fan of online awards sites (and no, the irony of my founding Worth1000 isn't lost on me). But we really respect the way that Rafe and everyone at CNet run the entire process. Sites don't have to pay to be included in the nomination process, there is some professional editorial preselection and the rest is up to the Internet. Very Cool.
Here's a partial snippet of the email we received from CNet that explains how we were chosen:
The 2008 Webware 100 Awards recognize the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications on the Web today. After receiving more than 5,000 nominations for inclusion in the Webware 100, our editors selected 300 finalists. But the Web's users decided the final cut, voting nearly two million times to select the 100 top products--10 each in of 10 categories--from our list of 300 finalists.
So we really have our awesome user base at Aviary and Worth1000 to thank for helping us go all the way!
Congratulations to all the finalists and winners - we were in amazingly good company.
One of the most fantastic things about building a suite of tools around a community, instead of the other way around, is that users are always willing to pitch in and help out others with tutorials and forum assistance. It's our plan to build our applications with a very deep set of community tools, built around forums, wiki-documentation, chat, user-made tutorials and sharable workspaces.
Aviary super star Meowza has already begun paving the way with more than a dozen "photo-phixing" tutorials for other users of Aviary's image editor, Phoenix. Got a specific question on how to make a technique in Phoenix? Ask and ye shall receive.
Unzipping a Kitty
View the full tutorial | Full layered file
Chocolatizing a Statue
View the full tutorial | Full layered file
Cyborg Frog
View the full tutorial | Full layered file
Smoking Woman
View the full tutorial | Full layered file
12 more tutorials after the jump!
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Aviary is excited to announce the launch of its newest application, Dodo, the web-based time machine. 
We've been working feverishly around the clock on this new tool which will allow you to age and de-age people, places and things from any browser with Flash 9 enabled.
Here's a video of Dodo in action:
Dodo is incredibly simple to use: Just upload an input picture, choose between different settings that might affect the aging process (i.e. amounts of alcohol and tobacco consumed), set a year and hit generate. Obviously results will vary, but under strenuous laboratory analysis we have found a margin of error of only +-11% (unprecedented performance for time machines in general, let alone web-apps). 
Dodo automatically detects the subject matter (noting the difference between people places and things) and chooses how to age it, using the Astley-Zonday time displacement theorem with accurate results.
Dodo can also be used on scenery. For example, Dodo changed this scene from an ordinary spring landscape to winter, using Dodo's built-in database of geographically accurate weather history.
Additionally, Dodo is not limited to animate objects, and scenes; It works equally well on inanimate objects, predicting what they might look like at specified dates in the past (and future).
We see market opportunity for Dodo across several mediums, not just graphic design. We imagine it will be useful in everything from tracking down long missing children, to determining if a girlfriend will end up looking like her mother, to deceiving potential dates in the personals section of Craigslist.
To access Dodo, sign up for an Aviary account at http://a.viary.com. If you already have an account, please log out and back in to see it appear in your tool list.
Update April 2nd, 2008: This was an April Fools joke. Dodo doesn't exist. Now can you please stop e-mailing us asking for access to it? :)
Editor's Note: with the launch of Adobe Photoshop Express, came a flurry of concerned emails from friends and family asking "Have you seen this? Are you concerned for Aviary?" My response each time was 'no - they cater to different markets.' They serve red-eye reducer consumers. We serve more advanced hobbyist creators.
But pictures are worth one thousand words, so we asked Aviary superstar Meowza to do an actual comparison against some of the more well known Flash web apps (Photoshop Express, Picnik, Splashup, Fotoflexer and Aviary) to see whether or not he could recreate one of his fantastic Aviary creations.
Meowza's full review after the jump.
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When we first envisioned Peacock (our "pattern generator"), we only saw it as a tool to create tilable patterns out of graphics for printing on merchandise. However, as it developed we realized there was potential for so much more. We now see that users can not only use it to make incredible patterns, they can also make photo-realistic illustrations and pictures. Most exciting, is that they can also use it to build reusable filters that will work in other applications like Phoenix, our image editor. Oh yeah, and this is entirely browser-based.
This time around Aviary superstar Meowza shows how to build a comic-book-a-lizer filter. He uses it to convert standard stock footage of a woman screaming for her life, into a cheery comic book illustration of a woman screaming for her life. And then performs the same courtesy on the damsel's gunman.
View the sources and full node composition
Sources:
This filter made heavy use of threshold, masking, simple shapes and melting nodes.
Our plan is to allow users to create and sell their filters to other users. So if you make something really cool - like a neon glow filter, you can charge whatever you like and compile your filter so the canvas composition stays transparent to the buyer. Your filter would then be available to them to use in other Aviary apps!
Example galleries of Peacock artwork after the jump...
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Hey eggheads, it's been a whirlwind here since we opened the doors here a bit and we've been thrilled with some of the fantastic press and buzz we've received around the web, from USA Today to 5 articles in the NY Daily News and a whole bunch of Digg homepages. Rather than bore you with yet another exciting video it's time to make our publicist* happy and share some of the awesome mainstream coverage we've received since opening our doors a crack in early February.
Full press list and quotes after the jump.
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At Aviary, we like to ask the hard-hitting questions most journalists shy away from. Most importantly: We can put man on the moon, but we don't have frigging flying cars yet?!
Luckily, we don't just identify the problems - we also solve them.
This time around Aviary's resident industrial designer Meowza has drawn up a plan to unclog the world's highways and put flying metal projectiles in the hands of every man, woman and child.
View the sources and full layered file
Sources:
We had so much fun playing with industrial car design, that we made another video as well:
Here's another example of Meowza changing an already sleek design by Ben Messmer of our friends at Local Motors.
View the sources and full layered file
Sources:
These works made heavy use of color adjustments, blend modes, painting, transforming and sourcing.
Kudos to Parliament and Arcade Fire for the musical accompaniments!
Standard disclaimer: For those of you new to this blog, this was not created in Photoshop. It was created in Aviary, a suite of online web applications. You can sign up for the current beta at http://a.viary.com.
BONUS: Here are some Worth1000 concepts for more flying cars!
We've seen quite a few blogs commenting on the irony of Aviary "competing" with Adobe using their own platform. The truth is, we're not direct competition at all. To date everyone we've met at Adobe has been incredibly supportive of what we're up to, especially on the Macromedia side of the company, as Aviary represents one of the largest testaments to the capabilities of the Flash Player (and Flex) out there.
In effect, we're a third-party evangelist for Adobe. Every time somebody uses our software, they are marveling at what Flash is capable of.
Different Markets
From a business perspective there is also no competition because our target markets are completely different. Adobe targets the niche creative professional market with a suite that is robust and comprehensive (a niche group that can afford to spend hundreds/thousands of dollars on software). Aviary targets the creative hobbyist with a suite that is streamlined and accessible (a larger group with less direct capital to spend, per person).
What about Adobe's initial forays into the web app market? Different market as well - those are completely consumer focused tools. Adobe Premiere Express and Adobe Photoshop Express are both deliberately lightweight offerings that bear no resemblance to the powerful brands of their desktop counterparts. My guess is there is some fear that by offering something more advanced that would appeal to hobbyist users they would cannibalize their high-end software sales... but I think that's unlikely. Web apps, (in their current state), cannot compete with professional desktop software used for professional publishing purposes.
Web-apps fill a different role. They are better suited for enhancing collaborative work flow during the pre-production phase, than desktop software. But it cannot replace desktop software for actual production. It's complementary to the Pro market.
Upselling & Combating Piracy
As for the hobbyist market, there is a direct gain for Pro-providers like Adobe, by other companies offering hobbyist-targeted web apps: Namely lowering instances of piracy.
With viable and affordable Photoshop light alternatives available, there should be a steep decline in piracy amongst hobbyist users - the largest group of software pirates (from my experience in the space). Why would that matter to Adobe? Simple. Once software is stolen, it generally remains so. A hobbyist who stole Photoshop to try it out for fun is not going to go out and purchase a full license once he/she is ready to go pro. (It's a lot easier to rationalize away a crime that's already been committed).
But someone who used legal web-apps and learned advanced concepts that exist in Pro software (i.e. layer-based editing) will eventually want to upgrade to pro software when they are ready for production-level work. If they haven't pirated Photoshop yet, they will be more likely to purchase it once they reach this level of expertise. And Aviary would fill an important role as the broker of that purchase.
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