The Aviary SDK is now part of the Adobe Creative SDK!

The Aviary SDK is now the Image Editing component of the Creative SDK. Today, you’ll find a new and improved version of the Aviary SDK on the Aviary site. You’ll also find the brand new Aviary SDK integrated as the Image Editing component of the Creative SDK to give you easy access to the rest of Adobe’s incredible creative technology. Come 2015, all updates we release will go directly to www.creativesdk.com. Check out the Creative SDK now and read the Migration Guide here when you're ready to integrate.

For any future updates, follow us @CreativeSDK. If you prefer your updates through email, subscribe HERE for updates in the future.

What is the Creative SDK?

Adobe provides the world’s favorite creative technology. From editing to storage to professionally-designed assets, the most powerful creative services live in the Adobe Creative Cloud. Through the Creative SDK, we’re enabling developers to seamlessly integrate Adobe technology into their own apps and websites to quickly and easily offer the best creative experience to their users.

The Image Editing component of the Creative SDK functions just like the Aviary SDK and we’ve included a bunch of new features for your users in this release:

• Overlays - Users can now make unique and creative images with our stencils, perfect for sharing on social media.

• Vignettes - Aviary’s vignette tool makes it super simple to place a dark or light vignette over your photo, with support for custom size, shape, and intensity.

• Highlights, Shadows, Tint, and Fade - These new adjustments allow your users to have more creative freedom when it comes to manipulating their photos.

• Draw Brush - On iOS, our user-favorite Draw tool now comes with re-built brush technology that makes drawing on photos feel more natural and lifelike.

In addition to your favorite image editing capabilities, the Creative SDK also enables you to give your users an expansive creative experience with these additional features:

• Unrestricted Access to Content: Creativity isn’t restricted to the desktop, so creative assets shouldn’t be either. Your users can browse, import and save files directly to the Creative Cloud, directly from within your app.

• File Compatibility & Desktop Workflow: Enable your users to seamlessly send and save Photoshop files between devices and even access individual layers and groups directly from those files.

• Creative Cloud Market: Empower your users and their imagination with access to a curated library of thousands of icons, fonts, textures, vector shapes and UI toolkits from our world-class creative community.

• Connected Hardware: Enable third-party device compatibility, like Adobe Ink’s next-generation Pixel Perfect tip, to redefine accuracy in your app and provide custom UI controls for Creative Cloud services.

• Publish: Connect your users to the Behance network, the world’s largest professional creative community, where they can give and receive feedback on completed projects and works in progress.

To see how our current partners use the Creative SDK, check out our Featured Apps!

Photo Hack Day NYC Recap

On December 6th-7th, Aviary hosted Photo Hack Day 6 back in our hometown of NYC. This year’s event was hosted by Aviary and Adobe with help from our amazing sponsors: Shutterstock, Walgreens, Astra by Photoshelter, Twilio, FilePicker.io, Foursquare, Imagga, Behance and Adobe.

We kicked the weekend off on Saturday morning with bagels + coffee and immediately dived into our Keynote speech and API demos! Photo Hack Day NYC was opened up with a keynote address by Shutterstock, followed by a round of API presentations by our fantastic sponsors. Hacking began and we were off! 

Hacks were judged based on technical accomplishment, cleverness originality, and overall real-world value of the application.

And now…the winners!

1ST PLACE: SHORTS

Team: Joe Biggica, Matt Hamilton, Conor Hastings, Adrian Lin

Shorts is an app where users can create shorts — small collections of pictures — and share them with small groups of people. With the use of the edit feature, users can add a more personal touch to the pictures they share. 

"Shorts" is a #PhotoHackNYC fav @photoshelter Two thumbs up collaboration apps! pic.twitter.com/hWdi2WM1mg

— Kevin Davis (@kevinGEEdavis) December 7, 2014

2ND PLACE: HANG 

Team: Nick Ihm, Emily Duong, Matt Grasser and Hang Xu

We’re so obsessed with the act of taking photographs that we rarely reflect on the many images we’ve already taken. Compared to the instant gratification of digital photography, the time-consuming steps of editing, printing, and framing your photographs can be daunting. But the results can transform your space and can be so rewarding.

Hang streamlines this process for you. With this mobile tool, you can easily visualize complicated layouts with your photo library, with real time measurements, before having to commit to printing and framing.

Informal polling looking positive for Hang @PhotoHackNYC! May the #PhotoHackNYC demo force be w you. pic.twitter.com/YGdBjC5UlP

— Kevin Davis (@kevinGEEdavis) December 7, 2014

CROWD FAVORITE: WOOFER

Team: Bettina Enriques, Brian Lam, Jackson Lee, Denise Burgess and Benjamin Masanga

Dog-owners everywhere share the same love and the same pain. They all love taking pictures of their dog, but they all feel the same frustration when trying to get their dog to look at just the right moment. That's where Woofer comes in.

Woofer is a mobile phone photo app for dog lovers that has the ability to play a variety of sounds to grab your dog's attention. Unlike our competitors, Woofer can record new sounds tailored to your dog and take pictures in burst mode.

These are only a few of the TONS of prizes we had at PHD NYC - thanks to our wonderful sponsors. For a complete list of API and Event prizes, as well as submissions, check out the PHD NYC Submissions List.  

Thanks again to our esteemed panel of judges, Travis Beck (Shutterstock), Tobias Peggs (Aviary), Taylor Davidson (ex-kbs+ ventures), and Eric Snowden (Adobe) for having the difficult job of deciding among all of the amazing hacks submitted! 

Thanks also to our wonderful panelists, Liz Eswein (Laundry Service), Taylor Davidson (ex-kbs+ ventures), Eric Snowden (Adobe) and moderator Mike Mignano (Aviary), who helped us explore the future of mobile photography. 

For more photos of the event, search for the #PhotoHackNYC tag on Twitter. 

Congrats again to all of our winners, and thank you to our amazing sponsors who contributed amazing prizes! We had a ton of fun at Photo Hack Day NYC, and we hope to see you at the next one!

Cheers,

Photo Hack Day Team

Introducing the New Photo Editor by Aviary, Now Part of the Adobe Family

Today we’re introducing our first significant release to Photo Editor by Aviary since joining forces with Adobe a few months ago. Adobe VP of Products - Community, Scott Belsky spoke of how the two companies, dedicated to building world-class digital products for creative, were coming together to empower the future of mobile creativity. With today’s release of Photo Editor, available for both iOS and Android, we’re taking our first major step in that direction.

We heard from many of our users who wondered what the partnership might mean for Photo Editor, an app that has become globally synonymous with fast, fun, and intuitive mobile photo editing for millions. We think today’s release serves as a simple answer to these questions: Photo Editor is only going to get better. Today’s release is one of our biggest ever, loaded with new features to help take your creativity to the next level. Here are a few highlights:

●      Sync with Creative Cloud to keep your supplies forever - Now you have the ability to sign in to the app with an Adobe ID, which will sync all of your photo editing supplies - effects, stickers, frames, and overlays - to Adobe’s Creative Cloud. Not only will this preserve your supplies forever, but it will also let you take them over to Photo Editor on another device.

●      Everything is free in November - What good is the ability to sync your supplies if you haven’t downloaded any? For the rest of November, all of Aviary’s awesome effects, stickers, frames, and overlays are free when you sign in to Photo Editor with an Adobe ID. Grab as many as you want, and keep them forever in your Creative Cloud. This is a $200 value, completely free for a limited time.

●      Overlays - Place stencils over your photos to make unique and creative images, perfect for sharing on social media. We’ll be adding new overlay packs all of the time and like effects, stickers, and frames, you have the freedom to make this tool all your own.

●      Vignettes - One of our big user requests, Aviary’s vignette tool makes it super simple to place a dark or light vignette over your photo, with support for custom size, shape, and intensity.

●      New photo adjustments including Highlights, Shadows, Tint, and Fade - These new adjustments (or “slider tools” as we call them here at the Aviary HQ) give you more creative freedom when it comes to manipulating your photos to achieve that perfect look.

●      Draw Brush - On iOS, our user-favorite Draw tool now comes with re-built brush technology that makes drawing on photos feel more natural and lifelike.

And this is just the beginning. Over time, we’ll be introducing even more creative features from inside our cozy new home at Adobe. Follow us on Twitter to stay in the loop on all of the great things we’ll be rolling out over the coming months, or drop us a line to tell you what you think of today’s release. And if you want to help us test exclusive features before they make it into our app, join our Android or iOS beta groups. Your feedback and involvement in the beta is invaluable and will help shape the future of Photo Editor for millions across the globe.

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Aviary Beta Testing Now Available for iOS

We are pleased to announce that we’re opening up beta testing for Photo Editor by Aviary on iOS! 

For over a year now, we’ve been taking advantage of Android beta testing through Google+ and it’s proven to be an invaluable resource. With the help of over 3,000 beta testers, we’ve been able to identify and squash countless bugs as well as improve and iterate on new features before they’re released. Starting today, we can now do the same on iOS.

Beta feedback is critical to Aviary’s development process. Not only does it help us polish up features before we launch, but sometimes it inspires us to build something completely new. Take our Blur tool, for example: Last June, our imaging team wanted to take our Blemish tool to the next level by changing the technology so that it made flaws disappear, instead of just camouflaging them. What they came up with was amazing, and our beta testers loved it. But we also learned that they missed the blurring functionality that the tool previously offered. So, instead of just launching the new Blemish, we added a second, brand new tool named Blur, giving users the best of both worlds. Everyone’s happy! We’ve learned dozens of lessons like this one thanks to our Android beta group and we’re excited to extend the beta program to iOS as well.

Here’s how the program works:

• Start by requesting to become a tester here (be sure to enter the same email address you use for your App Store ID). We’ll get you setup in our system shortly after receiving your info.
• You’ll be notified via email when a new beta is available. At that time you’ll also receive some instructions for getting the beta installed to your device and how to submit us feedback.
• That’s it!

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for our iOS beta group today. As a beta tester, your voice will be heard while we’re still in the development process—this will help shape and influence the way our new features evolve. If you use Photo Editor by Aviary on iOS and are interested in becoming a beta tester (and gaining exclusive access to upcoming features!), simply enter your email here.

Announcing Photo Hack Day NYC!

On the tail of our recent acquisition by Adobe, we're so excited to announce that registration is open for our sixth Photo Hack Day, this time back in our hometown of NYC! Adobe aims to enable developer creativity, and participants of PHDNYC will have the opportunity to get a hands on look at the Adobe Creative SDK and create amazing hacks with Sponsor APIs. We’re making this a more intimate event, focused on our terrific community of developers and users. 

More details below:

Who: Our friends, old and new, in the photo space
What: Another full weekend of photo-centric awesomeness!
When: December 6-7th, 2014
Where: Aviary HQ in NYC

Check out the event site for more details and a link to register!

Aviary, Adobe and Empowering the Future of Mobile Creativity

We can barely contain our excitement today as we announce that Aviary has been acquired by Adobe. Together we will build and connect the next generation of creative applications.

While this news undoubtedly points to a fantastic future, it is worthwhile quickly recalling the recent past to help explain why this acquisition is such a tremendous next step for all concerned.

Aviary was founded to bring creative freedom to the world. In everything we’ve ever done, Aviary seeks to inspire people to express themselves freely and creatively. Many people are familiar with our self-titled photo apps — with intuitive editing experiences and an ever-expanding collection of creative content (custom photo filters, frames, stickers and more).  In fact, we’ve had more than 100 million downloads to date! But the platform that's powering these apps behind the scenes has always been the largest part of our efforts. It also forms the backbone of a free SDK that we offer to third-party developers. This allows us to extend our technology and creative tools not only to Aviary app users, but to users of thousands of other creative mobile apps that today are used by millions of people to edit billions of images each month. It also gets at the core of Aviary’s philosophy: that mobile creativity happens best across a diverse ecosystem of apps that users are free to choose, not in silos.

Aviary's HQ in New York City is very close to the offices of Behance, the creative community that joined Adobe 18 months ago – and that is now a cornerstone of Adobe's Creative Cloud offering. Over the last year, we've gotten to know Behance co-founder Scott Belsky, who now serves as Adobe's VP of Products and Community. Scott and Govind Balakrishnan, Adobe's VP of Product Development for the Creative Cloud Ecosystem, have been driving an initiative to extend Adobe technology to third-party creative applications — an effort that manifested itself in June when Adobe launched its Creative SDK in private beta. As we all talked (and talked, and talked…), it became obvious that we shared a strong vision for mobile creativity. It became even more obvious that we should join forces, accelerate combined efforts and better serve even more app developers and even more people wanting to be creative on mobile. Today, we start that journey together.

Already, our teams are brainstorming on things that we can accomplish together. We will continue to support and enhance Aviary's SDK as part of Adobe's broader Creative SDK offering. While ensuring no interruption to Aviary's developer community, or their apps’ users, we plan to add additional components and services for developers to incorporate – such as the ability to save creations to Creative Cloud in Adobe file formats, access Photoshop technology, and connect creativity across devices using the Creative SDK.

On behalf of everyone at Aviary, I’d like to thank our developer partners and the millions of people who use Aviary-powered apps. Your support has gotten us this far. We’re now going to deliver so much more for you – as part of Adobe.

For more information, read the Adobe press release here.

Tobias Peggs, Aviary’s CEO

Undo / Redo Comes to Photo Editor by Aviary for Android

We're delighted to announce that today we’re bringing Undo and Redo to Photo Editor by Aviary for Android, v3.5.0. This has been our #1 most-requested feature, and we’re thrilled to finally be able to offer it to our users.

The more creative you get with Photo Editor, the more you’ll want to be able to undo or redo your edits, so you can experiment with different combinations of our tools. The feature is super simple to use - simply swipe left or right on your photo after applying an edit. That’s it!

Another great addition to this version is Sticker Flip.  You can now flip the direction of a sticker by tapping on it while it is on your photo.

This update also includes some important bug fixes and other optimizations. Check it out in the Play Store and let us know what you think on Twitter. We hope you love it!

Effects Intensity Comes to Photo Editor by Aviary for Android

We're thrilled to announce that today we're bringing effects intensity to Photo Editor by Aviary for Android, v3.4.7. You may recall that last week we released this very same feature in our iOS app, which lets users get the most out of our powerful effects by tweaking them to a specific strength. It's an incredibly simple and easy to use feature that adds a ton of value to our most popular tool.

To adjust the intensity of the effect, all you have to do is slide your finger up or down on your photo while you have an effect selected. This will bring up an intensity slider that fills and empties as you slide, indicating the strength of the effect. It's that simple.

This update also includes some important bug fixes and other optimizations. Please let us know what you think on Twitter. We hope you love it!

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Introducing Effects Intensity in Photo Editor by Aviary for iOS

Today we introduced a small, but important feature to Photo Editor by Aviary for iOS, v3.4.1: effects intensity adjustments.

We've heard from many of you about how much you love our awesome effects. But we've also heard how sometimes you want the creative freedom to alter the strength of those effects. With today's update, now you can.

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To adjust the intensity of the effect, all you have to do is tap on an effect once you have it selected. That will bring up a simple intensity slider that you can move up or down to your liking. Click 'Apply' and you're good to go with another beautiful photo.

In addition to this feature, we've also fixed some bugs and re-introduced the ability to share and Print to Walgreens from the app's home screen. Just tap and hold on any photo in the grid selector and you'll see a small menu of these options.

Have you checked out the update? Hit us up on Twitter to let us know what you think of the new effects intensity feature!

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