"Sumo
Paint, recently released as an open beta, joins the growing list of
online photo editing applications that allow you to work in your
browser much like you do in a regular desktop application (see the
review of Phoenix here). As its name implies, however, Sumo Paint is
not just another red eye removal tool, such as Picnik, Pixlr, or
Splashup. Sumo Paint is designed more for image creation rather than
image editing. In other words, its a tool for creating art. Like most
of these new Web 2.0″ online applications, Sumo Paint is free. Unlike
the other photo apps, its doesnt have hooks into social sharing sites
like Flickr and Facebook. It has its own online gallery, however, so
you can see what others are doing with Sumo, and upload some of your
own work. Just remember: its very new, just released in June 2008 as an
open beta, so expect lots of quirks and oddities. For example, I didnt
have a lot of luck getting the smudge tool to work. It tended to change
colors randomly on me, when it worked at all. But Im sure theyll get
these problems ironed out shortly.
Sumo Paint has the usual
tools youd expect, such as selection tools, gradient, paint bucket, and
so on. Sumo supports layers and blending modes, and has some filters as
well. But click on the paintbrush, and you begin to see some
differences.Not only are there a variety of brushes to choose from,
there are settings for size, opacity, scatter, random rotate, and
gravity (which is supposed to help you draw smooth lines, I believe,
though it didnt seem to work for me). This is a far cry from the
brushes in Photoshop, I realize, but its much more than Ive seen in
other online editors. Sumo also has an ink tool (not a pen tool for
drawing vector shapes) and a pencil tool. For vector-ish work, there
are shape tools of various kinds, and a peculiar line type that lets
you bend it once after drawing." --http://www.digitalimagemagazine.com
