Online replacement for Adobe? Aviary leaves beta.

In the wake of the rise of the anti-piracy movement, more and more people are looking for replacements for expensive and bulky software packages that everyone is so used to. Already, many people have switched from Microsoft Office to the free OpenOffice and NeoOffice, and some just use Google Docs.

For me, as a graphic designer, there has long been a question of replacing a software package from Adobe, with its notorious Photoshop and Illustrator, which are updated almost every year. At the same time, they do not want to fall in price by at least some tangible amount, so that it is acceptable for purchase, and the stupid toad would loosen its grip.

About it.

5 months ago I received an invitation to the Aviary online project , which by that time was in beta stage. Then I was struck by the ambitiousness of this startup from the creators of worth1000.com . After all, their mission was: "to make creation accessible to artists of all genres, from graphic design to audio editing." The claimed package of online programs included, and now are available to the public:

• Phoenix - Image Editing Software (Analogous to Photoshop)
• Peacock - They call it “visual laboratory” because it is a unique product that combines many features. I would call it a generator of effects and more, for working with bitmap images.
• Toucan is a replacement for the Adobian flower-picker.

At the comming soon stage are:
Raven (Alpha) - a vector editor (it is already in the Alpha stage), as well as: audio, video, text editors, 3D modeling programs and many other interesting things.

About the price.

To be honest, I really hoped that the project would be free, but we all remember the saying about cheese. Aviary left Beta yesterday with three of its products. For beta participants, they give away an annual subscription for $ 99 (as I understand it, $ 85 is more expensive for the rest) and to do this - about 15 hours are left by the time this post is written.

My decision.

Yesterday I tried it again, looked at the capabilities of the alpha version of the vector editor (it is most interesting to me), studied the tutorials and source codes of other designers , thought about whether it was worth it or not. After all, one of the disadvantages is that without an Internet there is no work. In the end, I decided to spend these 99 dollars, if not for a full-fledged work tool, then at least for the “if that” option.

Total.

I really hope that these wonderful people will not be affected by the global crisis and they will not stop working on the announced products, because with the development of the same WiMax networks in Moscow and other cities, I can get a mobile tool for work - everywhere and always, for reasonable money freeing a dozen gigabytes on your hard.

UPD Added the word on-line in the title :) so that it wouldn’t be so “loud”