Photo Editor by Aviary

Photo Editor by Aviary for iOS. 

Compatibility: iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch 3rd gen, iPod touch 4th gen, and iPad.  Requires iOS 5.0 or later. Cost: Free, in app purchases for .99¢  http://www.aviary.com/

Aviary has produced and iOS app called Photo Editor.  Aviary is the company that was recently chosen by Flickr as the photo editor of choice replacing PikNik. Aviary offers a SDK for Web, iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7. I am reviewing their app on the iOS. 

When the app opens it links up to your photo iOS device camera roll.  You can then scroll left or right through all the photos in your camera roll.  There are three buttons along the bottom:  “Camera”, “Edit this Photo” and “Gallery”

Tapping on the "Camera" button takes you to your devices' camera and lets you take a picture.  When you've captured the image, clicking on the "use" button switches you into the Aviary Photo Editor. 

Remember when first opening the app, it links you to your camera roll. Tapping on the "Edit this Photo" button switches you to the photo editor portion of the app.

Tapping on the "Gallery" button takes you to the camera roll on your iOS device. This way you can select a photo from your camera roll that contains all of the pictures on your device or you can select a photo from one of the galleries you have set up on your device. When you select a photo from one of the galleries the app opens the photo in the Photo Editor. 

There are fourteen different editing choices available for your photo. Enhance, Effects, Stickers, Orientation, Crop, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Sharpness, Draw, Text, Redeye, Whiten and Blemish.  These are pretty self explanatory.  I used all of them on several different photos.  The edits made to the photos happened quickly without delay.  Once you are satisfied with a change, choose the "apply" button and the app takes you back to the main photo editor page. You can continue making changes to your photo, but none of the changes you make are permanent until you tap "done".  When you tap done, the app makes a copy of the photo with your edits and saves it in your camera roll.  This way, you still have the original photo and the photo that you edited.  

Here's the picture above with some edits made. 

With Text, Draw and Stickers edits

The edit tools have a very easy to use system to make changes to your photos. When editing a picture using the "Brightness" edit feature as shown here, the picture is displayed and there is a wheel control at the bottom of the screen that you can turn to adjust brightness up or down.  There is a small gauge right above the wheel that shows how far you have adjusted the brightness darker or lighter.

The "Contrast" and "Saturation" adjustments have the same wheel adjusting system. Some of the editing functions also give you the ability to zoom in on the portion of the picture you wish to change.

Overall, I found the editing functions very easy to understand and use.

There are in-app purchases available that enable you to add effects to pictures. When you tap on the "Effects" edit button, you are given a choice of "Original", "Grunge", "Nostalgia", and "ViewFinder".  Each additional effect costs .99¢.  I bought the Nostalgia effects pack, since this was the most popular in-app purchase. The effects available in the Nostalgia pack are: "Siesta", "Cherry", "Fixie", "Firefly", "Malibu" and "Vogue".  Here is a picture of Rocky with the "Siesta" effect applied.

As you can see, the effect rounded the corners and gave it that dreamy, brownish orange color.  It looks nice and the app made the change in just a few seconds. 

In the options menu, you can do some customization.  You are allowed the change the order of the tools in the photo editing section.  You can also set the maximum size of a photo you are saving to your camera roll; 3,  5 and 12 megapixels.

I did notice a couple of things missing from the app, which seem to be ubiquitous in all newer photo apps.  There is no choice to share on social sites and no choice to share the picture via email. 

This app is quick and easy to use. I would recommend anyone who loves taking pictures with their mobile device, iOS or otherwise, to get this free app.