Or how to replace Photoshop?

Hello again!

I think you often need to correct your photos and images.
For example you may need to reduce their size, make them more sharper, or simply to improve their Hue/Saturation or Brightness/Contrast.

If you are looking for how to correct photos easy and convenient on the Internet - then you are on the right place. Half an year ago, a flash based online application for image editing was released. Not only that - but it is totally free. With this application you can make easy and fast adjustments to your images.

The application is called Sumo Paint.

Welcome to Sumo Paint

Sumo Paint may sound ridicolously - but this program has 40% of the functionality of Photoshop.
And mainly these options that you will need in your everyday work.

For example, if you want to correct an image, before you put it in the administrative area of your website.
There is nothing easier than that! First go to the official website of Sumo Paint - click here.

After that click on the big orange sumo fighter - this is the logo of the flash application
After you click you will need to wait for a few seconds for the program to load.

And voila - welcome to your new little free online Photoshop.

Sumo Paint offers many features for opening and modification of images, but I will show you the most standard way. First you will need to choose a file from your own hard disk!

Choose FIle -> Open from my Computer (File -> Load from my local computer)
A standard dialog window for searching for file is displayed - it shows the most popular extensions - jpg, jpeg, gif and png.

Find a photo that is one of these types, select it and click Open. The image will be loaded in a new window inside the application.

Now you can start working on the graphic.

Photo editing

Now if you want to scale proportionally the image you will need to choose the following menu:
Image -> Image Size…

Before you choose size first click on Constrain Proportions. This will guarantee that the resize will respect the ration between width and height - so your photo won’t be stretched or spread.

For example if you have an image with 1024×758 you can resize it to 800×600 or 640×480 - just write 640 for widht and the height of the image will automatically become 480. In this case the image is 530 x 354 so it will not need a resize).

Press ok and your image will be reduced in size.
Now you can put your image within the content of your website and it will not brake your layout and design. Usually when you reduce an image there is a quality loss (pixels). The images go blurred.

So to fix this you can choose Filters -> Sharpen.

You will see that your picture is becoming more clear now. If you slide the button to the right the image will become even clearer. But beware - don’t overdo it because the image will preexponated and it will look unnatural.

If you think that the graphic needs change of its Brightness/Contrast choose Adjustments -> Brightness/Constrast/

If you want to change the hue and saturation of colors choose Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation.

Play around with the options and if you are happy with the result choose Ok.

If you are ready with the changes on the image it is time to save it on your hard disk (before you upload it to your website). To do this you need to choose File -> Save to my computer and choose the filetype(.png or .jpg).
If you choose Jpg you can set the quality of the saved image.

That’s it!

Success!

Congratulations!
You just finished the modifications to your image.
Now you know how easy it is!

A few more words about Sumo Paint

At the time of this post Sumo Paint is at version 1.01. This is a serious achievement for an application, that is completely free.

Sumo Paint is really really popular and in future it will acquire even more users and fans. (There are nearly one million users from 190 countries so far). Keep in mind though, that in future it may become a commercial application.

Sumo Paint has many more features, than just resizing.
I will list just a few of the major ones:

Sumo Paint has layers and layer effect
Your images can be comprised of layers - like a stack of sheets. In addition you can have individual layer effects to each of these layers - along with transparency and blending modes.

Full toolbox
Many different types of instruments for selection, hatching, drawing and painting with pencil and brush, an eraser, filling with gradients and solid colors, shapes, text tool, etc. The tools it has are more than enough for most of your needs.

Filters and color corrections (Filters and Adjustments)
You can shift colors and color schemes and create interesing effects with your images.

Option to store your art online
On the official server of Sumo Paint.

To learn even more about the application, you can have a look at the online manual:
http://www.sumopaint.com/help/

Sumo Paint offers many more - so why wait.
Take full advantage of its features!

If you want to add something, please drop a comment.