Twitter's rollout of new photo filters and effects for its apps for the iPhone and Android-based devices on Monday put the spotlight on the five-year-old photo-editing startup Aviary, which has designed the new filters for the microblogging site.

With Aviary being the provider of the mobile-software development kit which is being used by Twitter to add photo-editing tools to its Android and iPhone apps, Coleen Baik - senior designer at Twitter - highlighted the importance of images for the Twitter users. Baik said in the blog post announcing the new filters that photos are "one of the most compelling forms of self-expression."

Aviary, which started as a web-based tool, launched its photo-effects API and its mobile-software development kit respectively during last May and September. The two releases helped the startup to rope in nearly 2,500 app partners - including Yahoo Mail, Imgur, Flickr, Twitpic, Shopify, MailChimp, and RockMelt - with the latest one being Twitter.

Even the disclosure about Twitter's rollout of Aviary-designed filters came close on the heels of the news that Facebook-owned photo-sharing site Instagram had introduced new tools and disabled support for Twitter Cards, Aviary CEO Avi Muchnick said that the company had been working on the development with Twitter "for a few months."

Noting that Aviary's mission is to "democratize creativity, so everyone can make photos look great," Muchnick said about the Aviary-Twitter partnership: "For Twitter, we enhance the photos people tweet."