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Flickr adopting Aviary for photo edits, waves goodbye to Picnik
With Google set to close the Picnik shop on April 19th, it was obvious that Flickr had to go out and seek a fresh replacement. Today, the Yahoo-owned service is announcing Aviary (a Jeff Bezos-backed startup) as the new photo editing tool on its site. Along with promising to be simpler and speedier than its soon-to-be deceased predecessor, Aviary brings expected features like cropping, rotating, sharpening, red-eye reduction and cosmetic whitening, just to mention a few. Of note, Aviary is written in HTML5, opening the doors to become useful on a handful of slates and handsets. Flickr is set to commence the rollout later today, though it may take a few days until you can check out the changes.
Another one bites the dust as Google closes Picnik
Given the spate of closures, abandonments and wound-up projects, we can't help but suspect Google's mantra switching from "don't be evil" to "sic transit gloria mundi." Mountain View's winding up online-image editing site Picnik in preparation for integration with Google+, joining Wave, Knol, Friend Connect, Gears, Health, Powermeter and at least ten other services that have been shuttered as part of Larry Page's "spring clean." In a statement on the site, the guys are moving over to the Google+ team to "focus on even awesomer things," so expect to see live-editing of your photos appear there before the end of summer. In the meantime, you can enjoy Picnik's premium service until the doors close on April 19th and those who previously stumped up (with, you know, cash) for the added features will receive a full refund.[Thanks, Henry]
YouTube unveils post-production suite, includes Instagram-like effects and shake reduction
Nothing says 'YouTube' like a grainy handheld shot that acts as a catalyst for nausea; sadly, this may all be set to change. The digital home of Home Videos has introduced a suite of new effects that lets you patch up your candid classics, even after you've uploaded them. What's more, the changes you make are non-destructive, so if your grand idea proves dreadful in reality, you can go back and undo all your meddling. The usual family-friendly sepia, cartoonify and vignette type fare -- courtesy of photo editing amigos Picnik -- are joined by some more practical tools such as brightness, rotate and the aforementioned sickness-solving stabilization. However, if your clip has more than 1,000 views you'll need to save it as a new one -- wouldn't want the next Numa Numa vid to get all discolored after going viral, now would you?
