Can anyone recommend a simple and noob/nonprofessional-friendly cross-platform app for simple graphic design and photography uses?
I normally recommend GIMP for this but for some people who I help with their projects it’s overkill and not worth learning for infrequent use.
What can I recommend/teach such people to use, which is more stripped back?
Common use cases are putting together basic flyers & ads, restaurant menus, cropping photos etc.
GIMP suffers the same problem. If you’re used to CS, anything else is going to be a horrific experience.
I’ve not tried Inkscape. Is it a bit more friendly?
I actually use GIMP regularly these days, I found Scribus harder. Yes, Inkscape is more friendly. It doesnt follow the Adobe paradigm, but it’s pretty quick to learn and is closer to the Adobe layout than other software.
The only thing that’s kinda funky in Inkscape is cropping, which is done via “clipping”, using another polygon to mask the component below. The selectable image stays the same size (but mostly invisible), making automatic alignment kinda annoying. However, thats for bitmap images, and Inkscape is meant to be vector-first, so that’s not the end of the world.