Flickr partners with Aviary for photo editing
updated 02:35 pm EDT, Wed April 4, 2012
Moves to startup to fill gap from Picnik closure
Flickr has announced that Aviary will be its new photo editing web app. The division of Yahoo had been using Google's Picnik, but had to scramble to find a replacement after Google announced plans in January to shut Picnik down on April 19 as part of a streamlining of operations that Google began last August.
The Aviary editor is written in HTML5. This gives it the flexibility to work with multiple browsers, including on iOS- and Android-based devices. The core functionality, which will be available for free to Flickr subscribers, includes lighting brightness and contrast adjustments, red-eye reduction, cosmetic whitening, cropping, rotating, and sharpening. More tools allow adding text, drawings and stickers. Flickr plans to add other, paid features at some point in the future.
Aviary is a start-up based out of New York City. One of its principal investors is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Other websites or apps using Aviary include Halftone, dogster, picplz, and FriendCaster.
Flickr will begin rolling out Aviary tomorrow. Incremental implementation will take place over the next two weeks. [via GeekWire]
