Image annotation is all the rage these days. It makes conveying tutorials, instructions, and FAQs a breeze, without having to pull out the heavy screen recording software. Image annotation programs also fulfill the need for many users to make simple edits, such as cropping and resizing, quickly and easily. While there are superb full-featured solutions already on the market - Snagit for Windows and Voila for Mac - many users like me feel compelled to give free software a test run before considering a purchase.
Aviary, the maker of numerous, free, online, Flash-based creative applications, has just released "Falcon." Falcon is an "image markup editor" that includes some of the most basic capabilities of its full-featured counterparts. I put Falcon to through a simple test in order to explore its viability as a solution for basic image annotation.
Task: Modify the Aviary banner logo
To test Falcon, I decided to take a screenshot of the Aviary website banner and make a few basic changes to it. The original screenshot follows.
Below is a list of the modifications that I planned to make to the image.
- Eliminate the green menu bar
- Add ".com" to the name of the site
- Add an underline to the word "Aviary"
- Resize the image to a width of 500px
- Save the image.
Results: Was Falcon up to the test?
- Eliminate the green menu bar
In order to get rid of the green menu bar, I chose to crop it out of the image, retaining only the banner above. Unfortunately, I had considerable trouble executing a simple crop in Falcon. For one, there is no automatic snapping. By this, I mean that the edges of the crop area automatically "snap" into place around the edges of the image and/or to an invisible grid. This allows for accurate cropping down to the pixel. With Falcon, I kept having to undo (there is a nice undo feature) my crops that were either too inclusive or too exclusive and try them again. The crop area is difficult to line up using one's eye alone, especially since all of the interface items have a border and drop shadow around them. This makes it a challenge to determine where the exact crop point is - at the outermost edge of the crop area, at the border's edge, just inside the border, somewhere else? Eventually, I just had to settle for overcropping my image, which excluded more than I wanted to.
- Add ".com" to the name of the site
I used a text-box to create the "com" for this step. Falcon puts an aesthetically pleasing border and shadow on each object that it creates. These can be adjusted (or removed) easily to improve the look of the annotation. To create the "dot," I used the circle shape tool. Alas, Falcon's shapes only allow for hollow centers, rather than filled ones. Also, there is no option to choose between a filled shape or an outline only. I was just stuck with the outline. Hence, the "dot" that appears in the final image was a bit of a trick. I basically resized the circle in such a way that its outline was so thick that there was no space inside of it, thus creating the appearance of a solid circle shape. Speaking of resizing, I am reminded of yet another disappointment in Falcon. It conspicuously lacks the ability to resize an object while retaining its aspect ratio. This is a standard feature in all editors that I have seen and is usually enacted by holding the "shift" key while dragging the corner of an object. Without it, one's objects are ensured to get warped vertically or horizontally as they are resized, even with the steadiest hand. Similar in effect to a lack of auto-snap cropping, this leads to less accurate and lower quality output.
- Add an underline to the word "Aviary"
I used the line tool to draw an underline for the word "Aviary." This was very simple. A nice thing about the line is that it has the same color, border, and shadow options that other objects in Falcon have. The bad thing, as with other objects, is that there is no way to accurately or automatically ensure that a line is straight. It must all be done by hand and eye.
- Resize the image to a width of 500px
Initially, I sought to resize the width of the Aviary banner to 500 pixels. I noticed a check-box for maintaining the aspect ratio of the image and assumed that Falcon would do so. So, I just typed "500" into the width field. Strangely enough, the width of the image changed, but the height did not. Thus, the image's aspect ratio did not maintain itself. I believe that this feature is either broken or not implemented yet. Next, I calculated the exact proportions that I desired for the image and set them, only to find that the image experienced a considerable loss of quality after being resized. Likewise, all of its objects did not look right as their borders had become out of proportion. In the end, I just decided to use the original image size.
- Save the image.
Falcon has a nice "save to desktop" button that allows users to create a .png image from the canvas. While it would be nice to have other format options as well, this is sufficient. Regrettably, I ran into another problem with Falcon after saving my image. Upon inspection, it did not look like it had inside the editor. Quality had been lost in the objects that I added to the image and this was especially noticeable in their borders. Also, the "dot" and "com" mysteriously overlapped each other, whereas they did not when I placed them. Lastly, the line had a kink in it and was no longer straight, while it appeared to be so inside the editor.
The final result of my editing can be viewed below.
Conclusion
I found Falcon to be difficult to use and missing some essential features that are necessary to make it what it needs to be - that is - the simplest and fastest image markup editor. Falcon cannot compete with full-featured programs like Voila and I doubt that it is trying to. However, I found its initial release to be harder to use than any related software products. Things like auto-snap cropping and maintained aspect-ratio resizing are essential to make image editing fast and accurate. Without these features, Falcon is not only less usable, but produces lower quality output at the same time. This is not a winning combination.
The good news is that Falcon is free to use and capable of saving images. It has a very clean interface and can create aesthetically pleasing effects. Hence, if you do not already have an image markup program that you are comfortable with, it does not hurt to try Falcon for yourself. Personally, I am enjoying my early experimentations with Voila. It has everything that anyone could ever want in image annotation software and only costs $40 ($25 for education). If you are looking to create professional annotated images on a Mac, it is by far your best choice. However, if you are not expecting much out of your editor and only need to add basic markup to images, without detailed accuracy, then Falcon may be a viable choice.
