Picnik closes, Aviary steps up
In January, it was announced that after acquiring online photo editor, Picnik.com, Google will shut down the company as a separate entity, effective April 19th, and Picnik staff will remain. All premium users have been refunded their annual premium fee, and features of the product are said to be rolled into Google+ as a native photo editor.
Yahoo-owned photo sharing site, Flickr.com was previously partnered with Picnik, so with the vacancy in their photo editing offering, they had to determine which photo editing company would take their place. Today, they announced a new partnership with Aviary as their photo editor on the Flickr site.
Promising better speed and simplicity over Picnik, Aviary offers the standard features such as cropping, rotating, contrast controls, saturation controls, sharpening and red-eye reduction, but also comes with “stickers” and text options as Picnik did and various filters that give any photo a special effect like black and white or a hipster vibe.
Aviary is written in HTML5, so it works on any device, including an iPhone or an iPad without having to go download yet another app which could be one of the top reasons Aviary is likely to be the next reigning king (or queen) of free online photo editing. Flickr says it will take a few days to roll out the features across the board, but is beginning today.
Signaling Picnik’s universal replacement
Flickr’s announcement today answers many peoples’ question – who will step up to replace Picnik given the number of options? Flickr’s choice signals that Aviary could be Picnik’s universal replacement, and is already available as a browser extension, a Facebook app, is mobile ready without having to download an app, and their suite of filters is comparable to the type of filters in the very popular Instagram app.
