SUMO Paint

The progress is moving forward extremely fast nowadays. The thing you bought a year ago is now an old stuff. The progress is so fast that you can see things which you really wouldn’t expect. Some of them you can see on the Internet. It’s said that a lot of applications are moving on the web. The reason is pretty clear, you don’t have to install these applications (well, they require some plug-ins), and they are available from the whole world. The problem is that these apps are sometimes slow, because they run in your web browser. An ordinary application running on the web is for instance your web mail-client (like G-Mail). But there are many more: a blogging system, chat, also IRC chat-client, internet radio, internet TV and, and now read carefully, a graphic editor.

Yes, SUMO Paint is a web graphic editor. And it’s no “simple” editor for drawing straight lines, circles or squares; it’s an editor comparable with Gimp or Photoshop.

You are required to have a flash player (9), which I have, so I had no problem with running it. The registration was really friendly. (You don’t need to be registered to use SUMO Paint). I have to admit that I’m always lazy to register myself somewhere. It’s boring to write the name, pass (twice), email (twice) and some other “required” things, but this registration took me about 5 seconds or so. The form looks like a log-in form extended for an email field and a checkbox “I read the rules…” When you click “Register” you are immediately registered and the login form becomes pre-filled with your name and pass.

The application opens in a new window. The appearance is very similar to Photoshop. There is a menu on the top (File, Edit, Image, Select…) Tool box, Layer box, Color picker box etc. Everything is moveable; the user interface is really friendly even it’s made in flash and it runs in a web browser. I can say some things are even better solved than in Photoshop or Gimp. That’s for example the right column. When you “minimize” one of the boxes, the others adjust their height automatically.

Let’s go through some features now.

1) I like the full screen feature. You turn it on here (View – Enter Full Screen Mode) and turn it off by pressing Esc. I think that the YouTube player has the same feature so maybe this is a native function of Flash.

2) Layers. One of the functions I wouldn’t be able to live without. So it’s pretty nice that this editor supports them. And what’s more, you can set the “Layer effects” for each layer, like in Photoshop.

3) Symmetry Tool. I’ve never seen this before. How to describe it… I set 4 points of symmetry. I started drawing somewhere and made a quarter of a circle and it made automatically a full circle. This tool is amazing :p you can make beautiful creations easily. Experiment with the gravity and the points of symmetry, you will get nice results.

4) Filters. Again, useful thing. You get a preview immediately.

5) SUMO Paint also offers you some own brushes, which are pretty good.

6) You can edit a file on your computer. It will be copied on the server and when you finish editing it, you can download it back or save it to your Sumo account (if you’re registered of course). The same you can do with a picture from web.

I could go on with the functions and features but I think this is enough. While I was writing this article, I was thinking about the idea of a graphic editor on web. I’m not going to use it for some serious stuff, but it really doesn‘t mean I don’t like the idea. I prefer my desktop graphic editor (Gimp), but you know, there are situations you are on a computer and there is only MS Paint and you need to edit some photo. In this situation I would definitaly use SUMO Paint for the edit. This is a case when I would prefer it but if I can choose between a desktop and a web graphic editor, I would use the desktop one. Maybe I’m too conservative.

SUMO Paint homepage