Aviary makes some of our favorite, easy-to-use photo editing software. It's available in many venues, including as the default online editor integrated with Flickr, as an iPhone app, and even as a Windows 8 app. It includes a dozen Instagram-like special photo-look effects, but adds loads of photo correction, adjustment, and enhancement tools, like text, stickers, cropping, blemish removal, and drawing brushes all in a super clear, simple interface. The app has recently been updated as a Windows Phone 8 app, and even though it's a top choice for image editing on that platform, the app still falls short of its iPhone counterpart and other Windows Phone photo apps.
Interface
I tested the app on a spiffy new Nokia Lumia 928. The startup interface for Aviary on Windows Phone differs in design from the iPhone version—not in a bad way, though: A large sample image takes up the largest part of the screen, followed by thumbnails of your camera roll and a camera button for snapping a shot on the spot. The app doesn't add any shooting features, but the excellent Windows Phone camera interface is less in need of that than the iPhone's, which doesn't give you access to ISO, exposure, and so on. A Browse button lets you traverse all your photo folders including any that reside in the cloud on SkyDrive or on Facebook (if you've hooked up your account to your Windows Phone). You can't swipe through images the way you can in the iPhone app, however.
After the initial screen, the Aviary Windows Phone app's interface is nearly identical to that of its iPhone app counterpart, once you select an image. It's also nearly identical to the top free photo app in the store—Picture Perfect, and to the top paid photo app, Instagraph, though the latter adds the actual Instagram filters and lets you share the picture on Instagram. Unlike the iPhone version of Aviary, however, I couldn't change the interface's button selection and order.
Like the iPhone version, Aviary for Windows Phone has a streamlined workflow from selection to image adjustment to enhancing to sharing. The editing interface sports a row of 15 cartoon-like but very clear, labeled icon buttons along the bottom. The first is simply Enhance, which offers four options—Auto, Night, Backlit, and Balance. On several test images, the Auto made very subtle fixes, while the Backlit and Balance tools noticeably improved problematic photos. Unfortunately, I couldn't unpinch to zoom, as I could on the iPhone version of Aviary and in Picture Perfect.
Filters and Other Effects
Aviary's Effects button leads to Instagram-like retro film looks and monochrome choices. There are 12 in all, and unlike the iPhone version of Aviary, there's no in-app up-sell option for getting more. When I asked an Aviary rep whether these would be offered at some point, I got this reply:
"For a limited time, Photo Editor by Aviary comes with a set of filters and stickers that are free to Windows Phone 8 users. Once we have a better sense of user dynamics and are ready to roll out the in-app purchases, users will have the option of purchasing additional filters and stickers while they are editing their photos."
Most of the effects have non-descriptive names, such as people's first names, which doesn't help much in selecting one. You do, however, get a sample image with the effect applied in the thumbnail. I like that once you use one tool, like one of these effects, you can go back and edit the photo more with any of the other tools, like cropping or brightness. This gives you a lot more control and customization than just applying a preset filter. One missing tool is tilt-shift, aka, selective focus. Free competitor Fhotoroom offers a well-functioning tool to produce this nifty effect.
The Stickers tool lets you overlay things like moustaches, eyeglasses, hats, speech bubbles, arrows, and other useful items on top of your photo. Again, you don't get the option to add more stickers at cost the way you can in the iPhone version.
The app's crop tool uses large touchable corner controls and offers preset aspect ratios, but the inability to zoom limits its usefulness. Another tool for which that's an even bigger problem is the blemish tool. Despite this shortcoming, however, I was able to remove a pimple from my test subject's forehead fairly convincingly.
No Sharing?
When I was done editing a test photograph, I had but one option, to save my new creation to a folder called Saved Pictures. No Facebook, no Flickr, no SkyDrive, no email. Of course, it's easy enough in Windows Phone to share to any of those places from the folder, but it's preferable for this to be a part of the app's workflow, the way it is in another Windows Phone photo app: Fhotoroom.
Does Aviary's Windows Phone App Take Flight?
This official Aviary app feels just like what it probably is: a proof-of-concept demonstration of the software's photo-editing capabilities, rather than a full-bodied photo app like the one the company has produced for iOS. There are no sharing options, to social networks or otherwise, and no configuration settings. Don't get me wrong, the app offers an abundance of effective photo tools that will serve many users' purposes. But if you want more than basic editing, you may be better off with another Windows Phone photo editing app, such as Picture Perfect; or for photo editing plus a community, the rather interesting Fhotoroom.
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