Could this be the breakout for Picnik, a Seattle startup that developed an online photo editing application?

The companies announced today a partnership "to fully integrate Picnik's comprehensive photo-editing tools within Flickr."

The deal gives Picnik Chief Executive Jonathan Sposato a trifecta with the major Internet companies. He worked at Microsoft, then started a company (Phatbits) that was sold to Google. Now he's made a deal with Yahoo, owner of Flickr.

A Picnik spokeswoman wouldn't say whether Flickr is also investing in the company.

Release quotes:

"Providing the ability to edit directly within Flickr is an important step in offering our 20 million members around the globe a complete photo experience," Kakul Srivastava, senior director of product management at Flickr.

"This integration is a key milestone in achieving the Picnik team's vision of providing fun, weightless photo editing superpowers wherever you are," Sposato said. "Now, Flickr members can experience Picnik's photo-editing awesomeness firsthand without ever having to leave Flickr. We already love seeing what our users can do, and we know that combining powerful, intuitive photo editing with Flickr's photo sharing community will encourage even greater creativity and expression!"

The release said Picnik's editing tools are now available on the "edit photo" tab within Flickr. Users with premium Flickr memberships can use Picnik's "Perfect Memory" feature allowing them to undo or redo edits.

Picnik's tools will be available in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean and Chinese.

I'm not a big Flickr user but this seems to be Yahoo's way of shoring up its editing features that lag behind Google's Picasa. Picasa, in turn, has been building up the community features where Flickr is stronger.