aviary obituary

Aviary was an online, cloud-based suite of programs based in flash that I used a /lot/ during my intermediate/early high school years.
Most of the available programs were focused on image editing, and all were named after birds. Some of them included the following:
- Phoenix - an image editor that had a similar approach to stuff like Photoshop/GIMP
- Raven - a vector image editor
- Toucan - a pallete editor
- Peacock - described as a 'visual laboratory'
Peacock rather than editing the canvas directly opted for a 'flowsheet' interface where you could connect various generators/filters/blenders to create images. This was my favourite of the lot and was the one I used the most by far. To this day I have never seen a program that provides a similar experience to this one.
Along with this free suite of tools, the community associated with them was probably the most wholesome community I've ever come across on the internet, with everyone happy to see/help with each other’s progress.
Unfortunately, due to business decisions, after failed attempts to monetise the service, the business shifted in a different direction in 2012 and closed down the online suite. The new direction was to service a IOS/Android app rather than a flash based service, and was more akin to using Instagram filters than being able to create anything at all.
Apparently, the company went out of business at some point this year and no longer exists even in that form.
Regardless, I will always cherish using the ‘advanced suite’ while it was still around and am pretty dang thankful that it existed at all. I’ll prob chuck on a few pictures that I managed to download before the servers went offline.