After months of brainstorming, white-boarding, designing, coffee-drinking and coding, we are incredibly proud to announce the release of Photo Editor by Aviary, version 2.0, for iOS. This is the most significant update we have ever made to the app, with tons of enhancements, tweaks, changes, features, improvements, and a whole lot more. We couldn't be happier with this release and we're confident our users will be, too. Plus, all of these great improvements that we are rolling out today will be available in our iOS SDK in the coming weeks. So developers, stay tuned!
Now, about those improvements. There are lots, so lets get into it:
- New Focus Tool - Focus helps draw attention to the subject of your photo by defining the photo's focal point and blurring out background objects. This tool is known as 'Tilt Shift' among some photographers, and is also used to make objects in certain types of photos appear miniature.
- New Warmth Tool - This tool adjusts color balance to bring out both cool and warm tones within your photo. It's a feature our Android users have been able to take advantage of for some time now, so we're excited to finally be able to offer it on iOS.
- Improved EnhanceTool - One of our all-time most popular tools, Enhance, has been...enhanced. The new Hi-Def enhance feature smartly sharpens, adjusts contrast, and brings out the best parts of your photo, while Illuminate makes poor-lit photos look like they were taken in great lighting. We've also renamed Balance to Color Fix to better inform users of what it's actually doing to your photo.
- Instant Editor Load - In previous versions of Photo Editor, some users had to wait up to two full seconds for our editor to load after choosing a photo. Not the case, anymore. Now when you choose a photo, the editor loads near-instantly. This is due to drastically improved interface rendering (Devs - you're going to be able to take advantage of this feature big time in the SDK).
- Less Memory Consumption for High Resolution Editing - Your iPhone is essentially a computer in your pocket, but that doesn't mean it has an abundance of memory inside. So apps needs to be careful about how much of it they're using up, which makes high resolution photo editing tricky (it's a very memory-hungry process). But when editing high resolution photos in version 2.0, much less memory is consumed, which means quicker rendering & saving times and better functioning of your device, in general.
- Blur is 10x Faster - On the surface, blur may not seem incredibly important to the average user, but under the hood its used in many features inside the editor. Certain Effects, Sharpness, Blemish, and even our new Focus tool all take advantage of Blur, meaning those tools are now lightning-quick.
- Saving Photos is Up to 50% Faster - There are all sorts of behind-the-scenes enhancements going on in this new editor, and the payoff is huge. Saving photos is super fast now, and in some cases, up to 50% improved. That means more awesome photo editing in a lot less time.
- Sleek, Streamlined Interface - The most noticeable change in version 2.0 is the beautiful new interface (and we can't stop looking at it). The main editor toolbar now scrolls instead of paging, making it easier and faster to find your favorite tools. Plus, the dark-colored layout and reduced padding help to bring out the most important part of Photo Editor by Aviary - your photos. (Side note to our partners: this new darker layout will still be completely customizable in the upcoming SDK release, with an all new way to change the editor's colors)
And there are tons of other small (yet significant) improvements going on in the background that make for a much better photo editing experience, all around. We think you're going to love this new editor. So check it out and start editing some photos!
Have you tried Photo Editor v2.0? Let us know what you think on Twitter!