Twitter has just published a nice little update to its mobile apps: photo filters, which should take the sting out of Instagram’s recent falling-out with the social network.

Twitter for iPhone and Android now contain special image-editing capabilities, courtesy of new Twitter partner Aviary. In addition to cropping and auto-enhancements, the apps give you eight different effects to choose from for hipstery, vintage-ish photos.

As we read today on the Twitter blog, “As one of the most compelling forms of self-expression, photos have long been an important part of these experiences. Starting today, you’ll be able to edit and refine your photos, right from Twitter.”

Here’s a clip demonstrating the new features:

For those of y’all who haven’t been following the drama, Twitter and Instagram recently chose to totally screw over users be eliminating Instagram photo previews from inside Twitter.

Given that Facebook acquired Instagram earlier this year, it wasn’t such shocking news. We suspect that the smart folks at Twitter may have anticipated the move and collaborated with Aviary accordingly.

A Twitter rep tells us, “We’ve been working with Aviary for months to introduce ways to edit and refine your photos.” It doesn’t want these filters to look like a reaction to the Instagram acquisition, but in either case, Twitter was prepared and has been working hard to beef up its internal photo tools for a while, starting with in-app photo sharing in August 2011.

Aviary itself just recently got into mobile photo editing over the summer. Aviary’s own mobile app was mostly intended to show off its SDK for developers who might want to add filters and photo features to their own apps. Given the thousands of partners who signed up with Aviary before Twitter jumped on board, we can safely say the effort has paid off.

Twitter’s own homebrewed filters mean that Twitter-official-app-generated photos will show up in feeds without any hangups and with full previews. The downside is that you have fewer options for filters, but most of the Twitter filters don’t appear to be as heavy-handed as some of Instagram’s filters.

Hopefully, the new update for Twitter’s mobile apps will help us all filter out the ugly in time for the social network’s upcoming forced upgrade to the new profiles, which showcase images prominently.

Embroiled in a photo turf war with Twitter, Instagram’s deadly weapon of choice is a revamped iOS application that allows users to snap better, more stylized shots.

The Facebook-owned entity today released a new version of its popular application for iOS, and a more subtly upgraded version for Android. Version 3.2 for iOS gives photo-sharers a completely refreshed camera experience, a new monochrome filter called “Willow,” an enhanced blur tool, larger images in the feed, and design tweaks throughout. Android users, meanwhile, simply get the new Willow filter.

The most significant changes to Instagram’s iOS app are to the camera, or the primary tool people use to shoot and filter their square captures on the photo social network. The Instagram team has entirely changed how the camera experience looks, feels, and functions.

Instagram’s new camera

“The camera has been the core part of the Instagram experience since the day we launched and as a result, we’ve made significant improvements to its look and speed,” the Instagram team said in a blog post.

Instagram users on iOS will find a giant blue Instagram shutter button now beckons them to take their shot. Alongside the button, application users will find a little window that offers up a preview of the most recent photo stored in their camera roll. In addition, the camera screen has been improved to make it a simpler, faster process to select from photos saved in the camera roll. There’s also a new grid guide available for shooting live captures; the grid is also included on the next scale and crop screen (pictured below).

Tilt-shift, the popular blurring effect included in the camera experience, should be noticeably improved in the new iOS app, Instagram said. The application now renders images in a new way so that depth of field is far more realistic and accurate.

The new Willow filter, introduced for both Android and iOS users today, is a monochrome effect with a hint of purple and is said to be ideal for “portraits, still life, and architecture photographs with contrast.”

Meet Willow, Instagram’s newest filter

The updates come as Instagram and former pal Twitter duke it out over your shared photos. Instagram recently dropped support for Twitter Cards, breaking the functionality that shows its filtered captures in-line with tweets. Instagram creator Kevin Systrom said the controversial decision was about driving people back to Instagram for a better experience, but the action has been viewed as an aggressive maneuver designed to do harm to a new foe.

Twitter, for its part, is about to introduce its own photo filters. The information network’s photo-altering features are expected to appear before the end of the year, according to a report that surfaced over the weekend. Hopefully, Twitter’s filters are a bit more enticing than the effects we’ve seen in images posted by Twitter chairman Jack Dorsey in recent days. Otherwise, it would appear that Twitter is bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Instagram 3.2 for iOS and version 3.3 for Android are available now on the App Store and Google Play respectively.

Photo credit: fotoyong/Flickr

AllThingsD reported the news, citing sources familiar with the matter.

The move comes right after Twitter’s fast-growing competitor Instagram made changes to its photo display functionality, which broke Twitter’s ability to show Instagram photos properly inside the Twitter stream. Instagram is owned by Facebook, a fierce competitor to Twitter when it comes to courting people sharing their images.

The Instagram move was a blow to Twitter, because many people, especially younger users, are increasingly turning to Instagram to share and display their favorite photos. And if they can’t find them on Twitter, they’ll rely more on Facebook, which can show the photos, or on their Instagram accounts directly. Indeed, Instagram links shared on Twitter are now directing people over to the Instagram site.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey is apparently already testing the feature, posting black and white photos of his Square employees

The holiday season is a big one for photos, because it’s a time when people go home and take a lot more photos of family and friends.

Also, Google just released robust updates Thursday to its own photo-editing and filter app, Snapseed. That app, now available on both Android and iOS, offers auto correct and filters, and lets you selectively adjust photo elements such as focus, brightness, saturation, contrast, and white balance. It also offers one-click sharing to Google’s social network, Google +.

Anyone else irritated by the sheer abundance of people who snap panoramic views of a stunning countryside and then alter/enhance/destroy them with a hipster, ’70s-style filter?

Joe Macirowski feels my pain. In a blog post, the app developer detailed his year-long quest to rescue perfectly decent photos besmirched by filters.

Macirowski’s app, Normalize, is now available for $.99 app on the AppStore. Normalize unfilters your filtered photos and restores them to their natural ebullience. If an image is full of shadow, the app can make some subtle enhancements to normalize the brightness and colors. With Normalize, you can see the view as it appears to the naked human eye — no borders or sepia tones allowed.

Once you download the app, simply upload the photo, wait a few seconds, and then use the sliding scale to tweak the color scheme. It’s not perfect, but the original setting does a good job at reverting the image back to its former glory.

Is this an app you would actually use, or would you prefer to remain in our retro-glam, darkly lit, post-Instagram world?

Early Instagram competitor PicPlz has notified its users that the service will be shutting down indefinitely within a month.

The site made the announcement on its blog Friday, and followed up with an email to all users today. In it, the message reads, “It has been a pleasure bringing picplz to our users, but we have decided to move on to other projects and have made the tough decision to shut it down.” The service itself will be officially shut down as of July 3. It’s users have been instructed to log in and begin downloading whatever photos they’ve uploaded via a button next to each picture.

Much like Instagram, PicPlz’s service provided users with a way to take picture on their mobile phone using various photo filters. It was also widely preferred by Android users, which — until recently — didn’t have the option of using Instagram on the platform. Beyond PicPlz’s photo filters, its Android and iOS app allowed users to add text overlays to photos, image correction/editing via Aviary, and upload photos directly to DropBox.

PicPlz’s shutdown isn’t a huge surprise. The service likely saw a large down in usage due to Instagram’s new Android app as well as the attention the competitor received from its multimillion dollar sale to Facebook.

PicPlz board member Dalton Caldwell said he supported the startup’s decisions, adding that the company was bootstrapping (meaning, funded only by its founders), according to a TechCrunch report. He also said the PicPlz team is funneling its efforts into a recently launched paid iOS app for Pinterest users called PinFlip. Presumably, this is what the team will be focusing on going forward.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Now that the news of Facebook buying up Instagram has made its way around the Internet, you may be looking for an alternative to the uber-popular photo sharing app. With all of Facebook’s privacy issues, some mobile photographers may shy away from using an app owned by the social network.

We’ve rounded up five alternatives to Instagram that allow you to photograph, filter, and share your favorite things. Most of them give you more control over the privacy of your photos and all them allow you create an account independent of your Facebook account, giving you more control.

Hipster

True to its name, this iOS and Android app offers several photo filters for your camera and a social network to share your pics. What makes Hipster unique is that it creates postcards out of your pictures with special borders and text.

Pixlr-o-matic

Pixlr-o-matic is for photo-filter maniacs. The app, available on Android and iOS, offers a plethora of filters, lighting effects, and borders for your photos. Each effect is more fine-tuned than Instagram’s filters. Pixlr-o-matic is missing a social network however, but you can share you pictures to Facebook.

Lightbox

Lightbox gives you more freedom with the camera on your phone, letting you choose installed camera apps that have their own photo features. Once you take a picture, you can add one of a dozen photo filters and share pictures to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and Foursquare. Photos can also be uploaded directly to Lightbox’s cloud, so you can view them on a browser. The app also gives you more privacy settings than other photo sharing apps. Available for Android only.

PicPlz

This app was many Android users’ answers before Instagram hit the Google Play store. The app offers multiple photo filters and a decently large community of people sharing pictures. Beyond photo filters, the app lets you put meme and text overlays on your photos and eliminate blemishes and red eyes, using photo editing tools from Aviary. PicPlz also features instant DropBox uploads. Available for iOS and Android.

Retro Camera

Instead of applying retro filters after the fact, play around with older cameras with Retro Camera. The app, available for the iPhone and Android offers five vintage cameras, including a Pinhole Camera and a faux Polaroid, the Xolaroid 2000. The app creates small postcards that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and via email, and you can upload the full pictures to a social network through the Gallery app on Android, or the Camera Roll on an iPhone.

Check out the gallery for screenshots of each app.

Do you have a favorite photo filter and sharing app not listed here? Leave it the comments below.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

With all eyes on Instagram’s long-awaited Android app, the hot photo sharing startup today announced a surprising partnership with rival Hipstamatic, opening up photo sharing in Instagram from Hipstamatic’s 4 million users.

“When we launched, it was all about Facebook and Flickr and Twitter, and now we’re seeing a huge shift in our user base toward Instagram,” Hipstamatic cofounder and CEO Lucas Buick told Fast Company in an interview. “We’ve never been a social networking company, but we clearly benefit from social networks. So this will be the first app outside of Instagram that lets you into their network. That’s pretty cool for us.”

Both Instagram (free) and Hipstamatic ($1.99) are iPhone-only and offer photo filters and the easy ability to share your shots — but Hipstamatic also includes other camera tweaks like different lenses and flash options. Hipstamatic has attracted a dedicated community of 4 million users, compared to Instagram’s whopping 27 million users.

The partnership solidifies Instagram’s lead in mobile photo sharing, after seeing explosive growth since it launched two years ago (with only four employees for most of its run). The company is clearly doing something right, if it’s now so big even rivals want in on the action.

As part of the partnership, Hipstamatic users will be presented with the option to share photos to Instagram, along with other social networks. You’ll be able to add a filter and other tweaks as normal from the app, and when it appears on Instagram it’ll show up with a “Taken with Hipstamatic” attribution.

That small bit of text alone could lead to more revenue for Hipstamatic, since users who click on it will be directed to the iTunes Store to purchase the app (it’s not sharing any of the revenue with Instagram). And for Instagram, it means the company gets access to a dedicated community of photo nerds who post 48 million photos a month.

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom tells Fast Company that users have already been using Hipstamatic to tweak photos before they get uploaded to Instagram, so he just wanted to simplify that process.

“It’s a step in the direction that we’re testing out,” Systrom told Fast Company. “We’ve been very careful about making sure that Instagram photos are about what’s happening right now in your life, and we want to allow for more of those photos to end up on Instagram regardless of where they’re taken.”

I expect Instagram to form similar partnerships with other popular photo apps like Camera+, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being directly embedded in iOS, similar to how Twitter is now a core part of the platform. With a more inclusive API and an upcoming move to Android, it doesn’t seem like Instagram’s crazy growth will be slowing down anytime soon.

Photo Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat (using Instagram)

Sad that Google’s online photo editor Picnik is meeting its demise this year? Well, veteran photo editing service Aviary is plotting to take its place. On Monday the company announced it’s bringing its photo editing services to the Web with a new Facebook app.

“We took the best pieces of our original software, made it lightweight, and launched into Facebook. We were founded to try to bring creativity to the masses,” Alexander Taub, Aviary’s lead of business development and partnerships, told VentureBeat.

Aviary started out in 2007 as a powerful editing service for professionals — “Photoshop in the cloud” as Taub  calls it. In 2011, the company moved into the mobile device market with a mobile API.

Aviary lets you do all the basic photo edits you’d expect; crop, brightness, and contrast. Beyond simple edits, Aviary has several photo filters and stickers to add personality to your pictures. The filters give your photos the in-demand retro Instagram-look, a feature Picnik lacked.

With Picnik gone, Aviary hopes to be the better and more powerful answer to Picnik, with more tools and faster photo editing. It also hopes to offer its services on a larger online scale.

“Picnik built their offering into third party apps such as Flickr. We want to fill the gap Picnik has created with those services,” said Taub.

Aviary is based in New York City and has raised a total of $11M from Jeff Bezos, Reid Hoffman, and Spark Capital.

The move isn’t entirely surprising, since filters aren’t very difficult to implement and Facebook has been the leading online photo sharing site for years. And this point, even Apple is looking to add photo filters as a core feature of its upcoming iOS 5 software, which will make it easier for third-party developers to implement filters.

Two anonymous Facebook engineers tell the paper that the feature has actually been completed for some time, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to have more creative filters on hand for its debut. Facebook will have nearly a dozen filters common to every photo filter apps, like the ability to make any photo look like an antique, the engineers say. But the company is also working on new designs to differentiate itself from the increasingly crowded mobile photo filter market.

The engineers also note that Facebook attempted, and failed, to purchase Instagram over the summer, something that’s been rumored for months. Had it managed to snag Instagram, Facebook would have acquired the startup’s some 7 million users, all of which are used to applying filters to their photos. But ultimately, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to Facebook’s mammoth base of 750 million users. Instagram also just recently announced that it has reached a new milestone of 150 million shared photos.

Photo: Instagram’s 150 millionth pic by “janefot”