Have you ever woken up in the middle of the afternoon and thought, wow, I need a graphics editing tool that's a heck of a lot better than Paint, but not nearly as complicated as Photoshop? If so, you're looking for SUMO Paint - the robust and free RIA for graphics editing.

SUMO Paint has a variety of features you'll like, including comlpex shape tools, layers with blending, a small smattering of filters, and all of the normal gradient, text box, paint, eraser, and path tools you're used to. In all honesty, it's much closer to Photoshop than Paint, but it loads a lot faster than Photoshop Express.

SUMO Paint also features a large community, where you can share the images you've made with others. They allow users to rank each other's images, and feature the highest ranked pictures from the homepage.

The only complaint I have about SUMO Paint is their homepage. Built entirely in Adobe Flex, they didn't implement any sort of deep-linking. So while they have a great page on the specific features that SUMO Paint offers, I can't link you to it and you're going to have to find it yourself (hint: click "Features" in the nav bar.) Why are people building basic websites in Adobe Flex? It's like HTML with a loading screen. Here's my rule: if you can do it easily (emphasis on "easily") in HTML, don't do it in Flex.

As far as I can tell, there are no plans to turn SUMO into a paid service. Everything appears to be totally free. This is definitely one of the best RIA's I've seen in a while - check it out.

Read more from RJ Owen.