We are proud to announce that we have just released a special patent-pending V filter for Aviary's image editor.
Watch the video to see this filter in action. We used Hillary Clinton as our test subject.
The result:
Update: 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 beta invitation at http://a.viary.com.
This video is insane. Much like the singer (zing!).
The most amazing thing is that this took the legendary Meowza literally 21 minutes to do in Phoenix, Aviary's image editor. It was a rush job, done largely for the purpose of showing everybody how a photo-realistic image edit takes place from start to finish, and it still came out amazing.
21 minutes! Crazy.
Here's a video of the Clone Stamp Tool you can use in Phoenix, Aviary's online flash-based image editor.
The clone stamp tool allows you to copy (clone) from a target area in a photo and paint it in to a destination area with regular brush options.
Clone stamp is perfect for minor retouching on the seams of areas that have been cut and pasted together.
Here are some great images made entirely in Phoenix that used elements of the Clone Stamp Tool:
Colin Farrel & Tara Reid merged by Meowza
Street by phischer
From the "People are falling apart series" by Meowza
If you already have a Phoenix account, you can open up these images to see how they were made and try editing them further!
Here's a video demonstrating the Copy and Paste functionality you can use in Phoenix, Aviary's flash-based image editor.
Copy and pasting is essential for any layer based editing program, as it lets you break an image into several pieces that can be individually edited.
Here are some great examples of images that were made using Copy and Paste
"Bottled Fish" by Nicky666, uses the following source image, copied and pasted into new layers:
"Iggy's Night Out" by meowza, uses the following source image for both a main component and window reflections.
It's very easy to see why this functionality is the most important one to achieving photo-realistic image effects.
History Panel
I'm including this here, rather than in its own post because it is a really quick and simple demonstration. Phoenix includes 20 history states, which means that you can undo/redo up to 20 steps back. We can presumably allow more than that once Flash Player 10 is released and memory usage is optimized further.
Video of our history panel in action
Our History Panel shows you a thumbnail (optional) of all previous states in addition to the activity done / tool used during the step, letting you visually jump between steps quickly and easily.
Here's a video of the Distortion and Free Transform Tools you can use in Phoenix, Aviary's online flash-based image editor.
The distortion tool allows you to distort (surprise) any active selection by grabbing one of the four corner handles. You can twist, distort, stretch and warp selections with it in 3D space.
A great example of ways distortion could be used: To make a person look heavier. This example of Britney Spears used distortion to enlarge her legs.
The Free Transformation tool allows you to rotate, mirror, move, scale, and skew any selection. You can also keep things in the current ratio by holding down the shift key as you use it. This is really useful for placing any objects in your scene exactly as you want them.
We've been ultra-secretive about Phoenix to date, but it's time to let more people take a look under the hood of the most advanced Flash-based image editor created to date.
Let me caution, Phoenix is not for casual editing (like cropping and removing red-eye). Of course you can do those things in Phoenix, but that's a waste of the engine's potential. We are targeting our user base of Photoshop-using hobbyists at Worth1000 and built it around their specifications, so including a lot of advanced editing effects was an absolute must.
Our goal with Aviary in general was to create a portable web-based suite where people could collaboratively create really rich audio-visual content (the type that generally goes viral).
Case in point, here's an early technical demonstration of a new tool we're including in our next build - the color replacement brush.
I'll be publishing some more advanced videos showcasing effects that are possible to create in Phoenix (the full tool) in future posts.
For now, here are some Phoenix-created images... not bad for an online tool, huh?
So why recreate an image editing tool online when there are fantastic products like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP and Pixelmator available for desktop usage?
Simple: none of them allow for easy collaboration. Every tool in the Aviary suite does.
If two people wanted to collaborate on an image (let's say to participate in a game of Photoshop Tennis or give critique on different mockups), a whole bunch of limiting variables would need to be in place before it could happen:
- Both people would need to own Photoshop (or the same program) on their computer.
- Both people would need access to an FTP site or image hosting site. The file URL would need to be manually copied and pasted to be shared.
- Both people would need a separate location to comment, and possibly a separate location where comments could be listed privately or publicly.
- Revisions would be manually maintained and stored separately on each person's computer (unless they shared them with each other).
- If they are trying to track rights, royalties and attributions, they would need some kind of complex contractual agreement in place.
With any tool in the Aviary suite, all a user needs is a browser with the Flash Player installed and they can bypass all of these variables. Is there a trade-off for production-grade work that must be a certain resolution due to Flash's limitations? Absolutely. But is there a gain in terms of quick collaboration? No question. For mockups, collaboration and feedback, the gain is essential.
My teams work flow currently uses Google Docs in much the same way. We draft documents in Google Docs, and discuss and revise them in BaseCamp. Finally once we're done collaboration we recreate or import the work in a production-quality tool like Microsoft Word to create the final output. It's an invaluable addition to our workflow. We suspect that Aviary will be valuable in much the same way for professionals.
As for hobbyists creating content for fun and web display, Phoenix should be perfect to create incredibly rich content.
For an invitation to Phoenix, sign up on the right hand side. And don't forget to check back for videos of Phoenix itself in action.
We've been quite busy the past couple of weeks (well, months)...
On the Design Front
On Sunday, we finished a redesign of the Worth1000.com site and are busy adding a lot more functionality to it. We're now going to expand on the core base by exposing Worth1000's library of original images through an API. We picture lots of fun reusability like Flash slideshows and games, not to mention instant access in the Aviary tool suite (when the user allows it). Integration between the Worth1000 community and Aviary is going to be a primary driving force going forwards.
Today we activated a special holiday design of the Aviary site to compliment the holiday cards we are sending out.
(The holiday site is temporary though, so take a look now before we take it down!)
We've been busy on expanding the current Aviary website itself so that it includes a way to manage your files when we launch and has plenty of room for key social networking features.
On the Software Development Front
On the development end we've been perfecting the framework that will allow all of our tools to communicate data between each other, as if Aviary were one giant application.
- We've added a universal resource browser that lets you access the Aviary library directly in any Aviary application.
- We finished a key component of the Aviary platform which allows our Flex applications to stream their file data to Rookery (our distributed file network) seamlessly, which means efficient bandwidth use for the user and quick save times in the actual applications.
- We've added chat directly to the Aviary platform which means that you can now access live help (or find fellow remixers) while you work.
- Raven, our vector editor, is being released as an alpha to an initial set of beta testers.
- Hummingbird, our 3D modeler, now supports texture mapping and light placement.
Of course, saving the best for last, here's another of Brent's additions to our advertising campaign (this one for Peacock, our Flash based Pattern Generator).
We're really excited... launch of the entire platform is right around the corner!
If you haven't signed up yet, do so now to get a chance of inclusion in the next wave of invitations.
Here's a quick video tutorial demonstrating how to use Peacock, Aviary's flash-based pattern generator:
http://a.viary.com/images/blog/peacock.swf
Warning: The movie size is a bit too large for small monitors - we'll make another shortly.
As a special bonus, here are 2 more fantastic examples of works created entirely in Peacock by Mario Klingemann:
Tesla spark 
Mirror, mirror on the wall
UPDATE Our video link appears to have busted because of bandwidth limits. Please try this updated link instead:
http://a.viary.com/images/blog/peacock.swf
Computational artisan and Peacock incubator Mario Klingemann has posted this beautiful set on Flickr, showing off some example works of art he created in Peacock, Aviary's pattern generator. These are obviously tremendous steps up from some of my own previously posted examples.
You can really get a sense for just how powerful Peacock really is from his examples.
Here's one of my own as well:
Anyone remember those Trapper Keeper notebooks from the 1980's that this draws inspiration from? I'm getting old.
Every day as we work we discuss business concepts in general: what's going on in the industry, what kind of practices we have evolved and what insights we have learned from other people.
We've been wanting to share our thoughts as a team for a while and decided that rather than keep everything on our own personal blogs, we'd share them directly on Aviary.
We're mostly visual thinkers here, (in case you couldn't tell by all the imagery on our website), so when time permits, we'll include some visuals to accompany our thinking as well.
Our RSS feed will be split up into two - business ideas and products. The product blog will keep it's URL:
http://a.viary.com/blog
Our new business ideas blog will be located at:
http://a.viary.com/bizblog
You can access the RSS feed for both blogs on the right hand side of the column.
We hope you enjoy the read!