Webware

When online image-editing site Aviary released Raven on Monday, the Holy Grail of image-editing tools had finally hatched. If you're new to the term, vectors are what allow graphic designers to create an image and scale it to any size without pixelation or degradation of quality. The Wikipedia vector entry does an excellent job of going into more detail about the differences between vectors and rasters, which degrade as you change their scale.

Raven's main editing window.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Beautifully, Raven only requires a Web browser and the latest version of Flash. In the words of Michael Galpert, co-founder of Aviary, "If you can watch a video on YouTube, you can use Raven." Because Raven supports vectorized images and is part of the Aviary toolset, users can share their images and critiques. This also saves the effort of e-mailing cumbersome, large, and layered vector image files to collaborate.

Raven uses a proprietary image format, called EGG, but can import and export files as SVG--the standard vector format. Because it's Flash-based, Raven does have some limitations. Importing images that are larger than the 2800x2800 pixels that Flash supports will cause them to be automatically scaled down, but that shouldn't be a big deal unless you're designing billboards. Many users should find Raven extremely useful for Web design needs.

You can open any Aviary user's images in Raven to create your own version.

(Credit: CNET Networks; art by Harry122)

The actual tools that Raven provides are perfect for basic vector editing. Once you've created your drawing, you can edit path nodes, transform a shape, or drag it to a new location. There are also tools for creating Bezier and lines and drawing freehand and calligraphic lines. Tools for making rectangles and gradient fills are also available. For each tool, a window pops up with helpful hot-key commands. For example, the edit path node tool tells you how to select multiple nodes, as well as editing or deleting a path's vertex.

The tools are laid out in a classic design, with the tool palette on the left and editing palettes on the right. The Layers and Fill and Stroke palettes are hideable to free up more screen real estate, as are the rulers. Surprisingly, there was practically no lag time in loading images, creating new shapes, or filling in gradients.

Raven's tools should be instantly recognizable to anybody familiar with vector editing.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Normally, I'd recommend a freeware vector image editor like Inkscape, but there are some distinct advantages to Raven. The built-in tracking and display of image size, creation date, most recent modification date, comments, sources, derivatives, and versions, as well as the use of tags, makes your vector images immediately Web 2.0-ready.

Also, if you're working on a Netbook, you don't have to worry about blowing out your system resources since Aviary is all Web-based. In my attempts to get Raven to crash, I ran 20 tabs, including Gmail, YouTube, and Aviary in Firefox. Although it ate up a massive amount of RAM, 825MB, that's not a lot if you consider that included working on naturally resource-heavy vector images.

Because the images are vectorized, you have to export them before you can send them outside of the Aviary. When you're finished, though, you can Export it as a rastered image, and that will make it socially acceptable. There are a number of online tutorials for Raven, and 62 in total for Aviary, making getting started just about as easy as possible.

Online image editing suite Aviary is now open and available to all after serving out a lengthy private beta which lasted about a year and a half.

The suite is comprised of four Web-based image editing tools that aim to compete with traditional software solutions like Adobe's Creative Suite by putting all of the applications right in your browser, making them accessible from anywhere.

The opening comes with the imminent launch of two new premium levels of service, which offer paying members more control over their creations than free users have. While all four Web applications are available to users at each of the three levels of service, the higher tiered plans let them save more items, remove and customize watermarks, and get access to professionally produced tutorial content.

The premium plans, which go live next week (November 3rd to be precise), cost $7.99 per month or $79.90 per year for the "green" plan, and $14.99 per month or $149.90 per year for the top-of-the-line "blue" plan. You can see a full sheet of the differences here, with the key one being both the number of creations you're able to save, and the option of keeping them private.

We've got 100 subscription discounts available, which knock $55 off the yearly subscription price of either premium plan. To claim yours go here before signing up. Embedded below is a quick video to show you what you're capable of doing with Aviary's tools.

Previous Aviary coverage:
Under the Radar: Eye candy that's actually useful
Aviary's creative suite is more than a pretty Flash app
Flash apps are taking over--Phoenix is the latest proof

Taaz is a fun new service aimed at women who want to try out makeup or hairstyles without real-life experimentation. You simply need to upload a photo of your face and map the outlines of your eyes and mouth. It's a fairly standard process that's been used in some other services, including Budweiser's Bud2Bud service that creates customized e-mails using text-to-speech and matching facial animations.

Once your face has been uploaded and analyzed you can adjust the skin, eyes, mouth, and hair using real skin makeup products that accurately match the real life counterparts. It's completely experimental, and when you find a style you like there are options to print it or share it with others. Printing out your creation is especially helpful, as it gives you a detailed shopping list of what products you picked in case you want to bring it to a department store or shop for them online.

I had plenty of fun outfitting my virtual self with nearly ludicrous makeup styles, but clearly there's some potential for someone who knows what they're doing. The same thing could be applied to certain post-processing techniques in online photo editors such as Picnik and Fotoflexer, or online painting tools with paints and other supplies that you could buy in stores.

It is worth noting there was a lack of "emo" makeup styles--which foiled my plans at emo-izing a picture of Toby Mcguire for the sake of making a Spiderman 3 joke in this post. You'll have to settle for this "embarrassed" Hugh Jackman-ish one instead.

[via TechCrunch]

This clearly works better for women, but there are some hairstyles that work for both sexes (some more than others).

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Those of us who are artistically challenged need all the help we can get when it comes to design software. A new tool called Vector Magic--the result of Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory research project by James Diebel and Jacob Norda--seems to be a valuable addition to the arsenal of free apps available for creating and editing images online.

Basically, Vector Magic takes rasterized images (composed of pixels) and converts them to vector (or scalable) images. The result is an image that can be easily resized with no blur or pixelation--an ideal format for logos or other images that need to appear both large and small. Vector Magic supports the uploading of JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, and TIFF formats, and can export its final products as EPS, SVG, or PNG files. A warning on the Vector Magic blog today warns users to be patient because of a recent upswing in the load on its servers, but I had no problem at all converting JPEG images of various sizes into vector images in no time at all. ... Read More

I've played around with a variety of online image editors, but "played" should be the operative word. For any serious image-editing work, I've always used traditional software methods. I hadn't found a Web service that could replace my usual standby apps (Photoshop at work, and Paint.NET at home) ... until I tried the new Web-based rsizr this weekend. I was blown away by its speed and ease of use in resizing and cropping digital images.

Even cooler than those basic-yet-essential functionalities are the app's flexible image-sizing features. Rsizr uses an algorithm called "seam carving" to expand or contract images in any direction while maintaining focus on the areas rich in detail. In essence, it lets you stretch or condense pictures without making them look blurry or smooshed. With a bit of practice, you can also perform the trick of removing people or objects from photos. ... Read More

The clip above is a demonstration of the newly announced Aviary, a suite of Web tools for tackling "creation on the fly" (the product's motto and URL). You can think of it as having a similar goal for the creative crowd to what Zoho aims to do for organizational productivity: create a diverse set of light but still functional Web-based applications that enable portability and collaboration.

When the suite is final, it will optimally include more than a dozen applications, each named after a different kind of bird. Each one will handle a different niche of multimedia editing, from typography to audio editing to monetizing the content you create. (Think CafePress.com on steroids). They'll all be compatible so that you can use multiple applications on the same Aviary project, and you'll be able to collaborate with other Aviary users, Google Apps-style.

I know what you're thinking: wow, that's ambitious.

And it is. I saw an in-person demo of the first Aviary application to exit the gates, image editor Phoenix, and I was very impressed by the functionality and speed of the program. But you really can't deny that this is a tough market to enter, as video remix tools and Web-based versions of big-name applications pop up left and right.

The catch is that the folks who make up the team behind Aviary have a pretty unique kind of experience under their belts: they're the same people who run Worth1000, the photoshopping community that stresses artistic expertise over comic value. (No Microsoft Paint here.) That means that while developing Aviary, they've had access to years of direct experience with the Web's creative community. They also now have a loyal pack of early adopters for their new products.

Aviary's success may indeed depend on having those skilled beta testers on board to help shape the new suite into a robust set of applications and spread buzz about it across the rest of the Web.

The beta test of Aviary's first two applications, Phoenix and color swatch tool Toucan, is invite-only, but you can put your name in the hat here. The next Aviary application to be rolled out will be vector editor Raven, with the rest to follow over the next few months.