Angry Aps II: Sumopaint

Finnish gaming industry has got lots of publicity recently after successes by Rovio and Supercell. But this is not about the gaming - this is about other great Finnish applications which have somehow affected my life and working in digital world.

My personal history of digital drawing

I have drawn comics and illustrations commercially since I was fifteen. Already early in the home computer era I nomaded in to the digital drawing and I am still on that journey. During the past 20-30 years I have used the most graphical tools there are and many times desperately seeked free solutions to do the basic graphics stuff when the expensive proprieraty solutions were out of reach.

Sumopaint is in the cloud

Some years ago I was on the road and needed to have an graphics application for my digital illustrations. I like to keep my presentations visual and I hate to snatch and use images which are made by someone else than by me. So what to do?

I did not want to use the crappy Paint in the windows, and I was on the mood to try out something new. I rememberer that I had glimpsed a graphic tool which had some funny Japanese name. The application was working in the cloud - and yes, it was called as Sumopaint! Great example of naming the product in a way that even random glimpse leaves a memory mark to the brain.

I have been a loyal user of Sumopaint ever since. It does most of the basic things the Photoshop Elements does, but since it is a browser based service working in the cloud, it follows you everywhere you have an internet connection and you are not dependable of your own computer any more.

For a user, such as me, who is using graphics tools mostly for the illustrations, the layer based working philosophy is all what we need. 95% of the Photoshop's commands are useless for me when I am illustrating or drawing cartoons.

As many international and independent reviewers seem to claim, Sumopaint is one of the best free/or almost free graphic applications there is. I concur. I have tried the most of them.

Sumopaint is easy to use, has the familiar user interface known from the many popular graphics software and most of all it is free of charge (for the basic photo corrections) or extremely cheap (browser based application is 9 USD and a version you can download and use as an offline version is 19 USD). Considering that a full version of Photoshop is around 1000 USD.

Best for the digital images

Sumopaint works best with images you create for the web. Illustrations to your blog or to Facebook. I use it to digital drawing with Wacom's tablet. Works nicely. Below is the image I've drawn with the pen tablet and the Sumopaint.

Wold painted with Sumopaint. Used many graphical layers on the top of each others and after working with those all flattened it to one image.

Free version has the most of the things you need for cropping, resizing and contrast/colour adjustments you need to do for your online images. If you pay some extra you'll get almost 40 different kind of filters you can use in order to create some dramatical effects to your image.

Sumopaints filters

Filters are popular. Many mobile photo software is actually nothing more than ready-made filters for your mobile photos to share to the social media platforms. The most known of them is Instagram. Sumopaints filters - together with colour correction - enable you to play with your own photos and alter them as you will. Most of the filters - as in Photoshop - are such you seldomly will use and you'll learn fast your own personal favourites.

I have the commercial version of the Sumopaint and I hardly use filters at all.

Sumopaint tools

With its tools the application is perhaps the strongest. They include the familiar pen/pencil, paint, magic wand, paint pucket, blurring, smudging and clone stamp (!) tools but also special vector graphics stuff for some effects like ellipses, starts and polygons. Also symmetry tool is fun if you want to release out your inner artist.

Clone stamp is especially handy if you want to retouche your image - remove pimples or some other unwanted items from your photos before publishing them.

The Company

The company behind Sumopaint application, Sumoing Oy, is Helsinki based start up established last year. The application, however, has been available for some years already. The current version of the application is 5.0.4.

Application is also available for the iPad at 1,99 USD. So if you are looking for a great drawing too for yourself or for your kids to your iPad, go for the Sumopaint in AppStore. Current user review rating is Four Stars.

Application home page in Internet has over 40k likes in Facebook. According to the company they are soon launching out an new application, Repix, which is currently in private beta. Name would suggest it would handle editing of digital photographs. We'll seen that soon.

The writer has no whatsoever connection to the company. Opinions and reviews of the applications are his personal views only.