Contest: Facebook Profile Photo Makeover

A few months ago, we partnered up with Pixable to offer their users an additional level of awesome - fun photo editing on the fly! With a simple click, Pixable users can launch Feather to tweak their profile pics, friend's engagement photos, step-grandma's poodle pics, etc. etc. This week, we're combining all our fun juices together to run a Facebook Exclusive contest, entitled "Profile Photo Makeover!" Plus we just like having contests!

The rules are simple:

Use Pixable's Photofeed app to choose a friend's profile pic (you can easily find them by choosing the 'New Profile Pics' category.

Edit the photo with Feather, our simple image editor. You can find the edit button on the bottom lefthand corner. Launch Pixable now.

Once the app is running,

• Add a funny, hilarious, laugh till your stomach explodes comment with the text tool
• Beautify the photo with a fun filter (polaroid, retro, instant, old news)
• Adjust where needed! (change colors, add doodling, adjust brightness, blur, crop, etc.)
• Slap a silly beard or hat with the stickers tool
• Be as creative as you want!

Submissions

Entries may be submitted in 2 ways

• Download photo to desktop (option will be displayed after you click 'save'). Then upload it to the Pixable wall on Facebook.
• Download photo to desktop (option will be displayed after you click 'save'). Then share it on Twitter with a #Pixable hashtag.

The last photo must be submitted by August 16th, 11:59PM PST. Our team of scavengers will find every photo submitted, so don't you worry!

*U.S. submissions only

What am I going to win???

Our BFF's at Photojojo have been kind enough to offer the best and most creative photo a sweet prize! If you're not familiar with Photojojo, they publish an insanely great newsletter on photography. More specifically, they scour the internets, rip pages out of magazines, ransack their friends' closets, and go though dumpsters to find the very best Photo tups, DIY projects, and Gear. The Photojojo store carries only the most awesome photo gifts and gear for photographers.

Up for grabs is a fisheye, telephoto, AND macro/wide angle cell phone lens! These finely constructed lenses transform your standard phone photos into a wide, up-close, super zoomed and wonderfully warped wonders. They work with any camera phone, and yes, you'll receive all three lenses! Learn more about the lenses

*The top photo will also receive an Aviary t-shirt, Pixable t-shirt, and a box full of goodies.

We're looking forward to all the entries! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email us, but also you can subscribe to our blog , follow us on twitter and facebook to get the latest updates on contests and more.

Tip Tuesday: Quick Crop

Over the next few weeks, our weekly tips will be focusing on how to do quick, simple edits of your images with Aviary's tools! [youtube width="550" height="344"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsfCxtSf6q4[/youtube]

Aviary Chrome extension Aviary Firefox extension

Ning Integrates Feather to Add Photo Functionality to Their Networks

Have you ever wanted to create your own social website? A social destination that allows you to create an entire community, based on anything you love?

Welcome to Ning. They're the world's largest platform for creating social websites. People from all around the world - including top organizers, marketers, influencers and activists - use Ning to create and manage online destinations for their audience. Think this sounds like a lot of work? Think again. Ning has made it incredibly simple to do just that. From complete branding, freedom to visually design the site, to organizing events in a click, you can do it all with Ning.

You can even further customize your Ning Network with Ning Apps. Ning Apps gives users the ability to add additional features and extensions, like a CafePress shop, an inline UStream video, or a Twitter tracker. We know what you're thinking...what about photo editing?!?! Ok fine, we'll spoil the surprise (well I guess we already did in the title), organizers of any Ning Network can now add photo editing functionality to all of their images with Feather, our simple image editor!

To activate the Aviary Ning extension, just head over to their network dashboard, and visit the Ning Extensions page (under Tools). Once you're there, click 'Activate' to turn on the fun!

Once the extension is added to the network, users will see the ability to turn their photos from 'meh' to 'OMG stunning'! They'll be able to make quick edits their photos (rotate, crop, adjusting color, saturation, and more), add fun stickers, and even add stylistic filters like Toy Camera and Retro.

"The photo feature continues to be one of the most popular on Ning, second only to the inbox/forum. By working closely with Aviary, who already has an awesome photo editing product, we're now able to offer our users an easy way to create more engagement with their Ning site.

A priority for us, we continue to develop partnerships and products that improve the experience for Ning Creators and members. Sometimes strategically partnering, like we've done with Aviary today, means we can roll-out new functionality even faster.

As many have said, "A picture is worth 1,000 words" and this integration gives people the freedom to speak volumes, empowering users to create an image without click away from the site" - Ning 

We're super excited about this partnership and the simple idea of enhancing the overall Ning experience. For us, it's another way to add a checkmark to our mission: Powering the World's Creativity!

Follow us on twitter to get the latest updates on partnerships @aviary.

If you’ve integrated our Simple Image Editor onto your site, or would like to inquire about custom stickers and skins, let us know at api@aviary.com. Our Simple Image Editor is free to use and free to implement on your site. If you’re a developer and would like to try out Feather, read the technical documentation or embed it on your site, visit our developer site to learn more.

TwitrPix Integrates Feather to add Editing Functionality

Want to edit your photos before posting them to Twitter? Now you can! Twitrpix currently allows users to upload and posts their photos onto Twitter using their mobile device or desktop web browser. Users can include a message while instantly sharing with their family, friends, and co-workers. Twitrpix not only provides this simple and effective service to their users, they also power a variety photo sharing services across the web, including Twitcher, Twitterville, TweetPocket, and more.

Twitrpix has gone ahead and added Feather, our simple image editor, to their list of functionality. Users can now edit, enhance, and have a blast with their posted photos - all without leaving the browser! With this new and exciting partnership, we're one step closer to our mission: Powering the World's Creativity!

Want to see how Feather works on other sites? Getting started is easy. First, log in to Twitrpix with your Twitter account. Choose a photo, add a caption if you want, and click 'Upload Photo' (It's that easy!)

Once uploaded, head over to 'MY PIX', and click on any photo. To launch Feather, click on 'Photo Editor'.

You may notice that the editor looks a little different from our original design. We’ve worked together with Twitrpix to produce a customized skin, and it serves as an excellent example of how our editor can be customized to fit your site! We changed the color schemes to fit Twitrpix’s brand, and we changed the buttons from eggs to circles. If you’d like to look into customizing Feather for your own site, give us a hoot!

Users can crop, rotate, resize, adjust color, saturation, contrast, as well as apply stylistic filters like instant, retro, toy camera, and more. To see a full list of features offered by Feather, visit developers.aviary.com/featherapi

"At TwitrPix HQ, we’ve always followed the ideals that to succeed we needed to be different, find our own lane.  One of things that really surprised us was that only one of the photo sharing services from “Mashable’s Top 10 Twitter Photo-Sharing Sites” (yes we refer to that list in our inevitable climb to the #1 spot) offered users the ability to edit the photos they’ve uploaded.

We asked ourselves, “How can we be a media sharing platform if users can’t even edit and reshare their content?”  In fact, although we didn’t offer it as well (guilty as charged), we knew it was important but our roadmap was already stacked to the brim.

As luck would have it, though its probably more about recognizing innovation in others than luck, we became aware of a new product from Aviary called Feather.  We realized that it could immediately allow us to fast track a fundamental component that we were missing. And to do so, without reinventing the wheel and coding it from the ground up — saving us valuable development cycles and resources.

The integration was one of the most straight-forward processes we've come across and allowed us to roll the feature to small group of users really quickly.  Feedback gathered has been fantastic so far.  And we’re happy to say that we’re rolling out this new component to all of our users immediately." - Jerry Thompson, Co-Founder of Twitrpix and Cando Entertainment

Follow us on twitter to get the latest updates on partnerships @aviary

If you’ve integrated our Simple Image Editor onto your site, or would like to inquire about custom stickers and skins, let us know at api@aviary.com. Our Simple Image Editor is free to use and free to implement on your site. If you’re a developer and would like to try out Feather, read the technical documentation or embed it on your site, visit our developer site to learn more.