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Got an email this morning announcing the new Digital Image Editor that runs inside of Joomla.   Very cool!!!  I have only tried the demo on the site, but it looks great.

It's a very basic editor that does simple things like crop, rotate, resize, flip, and apply a few filters. There's a history option so a client can go backwards if they make a mistake. That's really all a client needs to get images on their site. It's definitely not Photoshop -- but it doesn't NEED to be. This is intended for people who want to post a photo directly from the digital camera, then edit the image within Joomla, making Joomla one-stop shopping for posting content and images.

Drawback: it does save the original image and you save the edited version as another file. Downside to this is that your disk space could fill up very quickly with original pictures, particularly if they're straight off a many megapixel digital camera.

Potential drawback: It requires Ion Cube Loader to run on the server, which is a PHP helper application. Not all hosts have this, so be sure to check your host before purchasing.

Overall, I think this does bring yet another layer of usability to Joomla. The interface is simple and straightforward (at least to me), and I think my clients could handle it just fine.