Aviary's new photo editing SDK
Channel: Robert Scoble's Building 43
Date: 01/11/2011

It wasn't that long ago when taking a photo required at least a small amount of prior planning. Now, we simply pull our phones from our pockets and snap high quality photos whenever and wherever we want, and we have dozens of apps that allow us to edit and share our photos with ease. Aviary is making these apps even more powerful and feature rich with their new developer tool kit.

"We build an SDK that developers can build into their mobile apps—iOS for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch as well as Android," explains Iz Derdik, Chief Technology Officer with Aviary, Inc. "[This SDK] allows them to embed a photo editor directly inside their app, [so] within the workflow of taking photos, people can now edit them as well."

With Aviary's SDK, you can apply a wealth of effects, such as vintage effects or negative effects, to your photos. You can manipulate colors, add stickers, add text, adjust contrast and brightness as well as crop your photos. Or you can simply use Aviary's auto correct filter, which takes a photo and makes it better automatically.  And it takes only minutes for developers to include Aviary in their code.

"On the mobile side of things, it's really, really easy," explains Derdik. "There's no cost for the tools at all. All they have to do is download the SDK, which is a library in both iOS and Android...that they can statically link inside their code, change a couple of config settings in their app and deploy to the app store. That's all there is to it."

Aviary plans to generate revenue by offering users the opportunity to pay for premium effects that will allow them to build their own filters using ingredients like stickers and fonts that they can purchase through the apps. The partner app that generates the sale will get a percentage of that sale.

"The market opportunity is huge," says Derdik. "The phone is a ubiquitous part of every person's life. They have cameras on them, and now that people have cameras in their pockets, they're taking tons and tons of photos. [Our SDK] allows us to help them make their photos even better."

More info:

Aviary web site: http://www.aviary.com/
Aviary blog: http://blog.aviary.com/
Aviary profile on CrunchBase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/aviary
Aviary profile on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Aviary