Aviary: Toucan

Aviary is a really cool web app for creating art.  It includes applications for photo editing, image creation, vector editing, image markup, and palette creation, amongst other tools.  Although the apps require a Flash plug-in, the entire suite is free, making Aviary an attractive substitute for the Adobe Creative Suite, especially for casual artists who don't need the extensive features or price tag of proprietary software.

I tried out Toucan, which is a simple app designed for palette creation.  Toucan's intuitive, minimalistic interface allows the user to design a colour palette using up to 20 colours.  The colours can be individually selected from a colour wheel, or various relationships can be chosen to select complementary and opposite combinations.  Alternatively, you can import a picture and select colours from that picture to create a palette.  Toucan's interface reflects design intent by allowing the user to increase the pixel size of images in order to make colour selection easier.  Toucan also delivers the ability to view the palette through filters mimicking various visual impairments.

I made palettes for the two images shown below. Overall, I was really pleased with Toucan and I'm excited to try the other apps available from Aviary.  Keep up the great work!


Palette 1: Tulips at Dusk
Jason took this photo at the University of Waterloo campus in the spring.


Palette 2: Glacier Point
I took this photo at the peak of Glacier Pt. during the fall in Yosemite, California.