Aviary photo editor arrives on the iPhone for free

Aviary is known in software circles as an Android photo editor and a plug-in for developers who want to easily add photo editing to existing apps.

Now iPhone photographers can try Aviary as a standalone app that is powerful, has nice features, and best of all, is free.

The app includes one-tap photo enhancing, ability to add text to photos, sharpen and blur, crop and rotate, and adjustments for brightness, saturation and contrast. For portraits, there is red-eye removal, whiten teeth and blemish removal.

There are also some fixed adjustments for things such as black and white conversion, sepia and more.

There's noting groundbreaking in the Aviary package, but it has a solid mix of editing tools. One particularly good feature is that you can output your photos at full resolution, up to 12 MB, which exceeds the size of iPhone photos.

You can make subtle changes or garish ones. That's up to you. One criticism of the workflow: there is no clear way to save. You save by hitting a button marked 'done' but that might confuse some users. When you press the 'done' button, the image is saved to your photo roll. There are also additional filters that can be added as an in-app purchase. I would have rather seen Aviary charge a dollar or two and provide all the features to begin with.

Despite those minor shortcomings, Aviary is powerful and simple to use. I think it's worth a download if you are an avid iPhone photographer.

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