Greetings!
My apologies in advance if this is a repeat or question with an obvious answer.
I am a very low-power user of photo and layout software. My core business is designing and building (primarily building) custom furniture and acoustic guitars. I use desktop publishing for producing the occasional postcard, price list or other graphics for promotional purposes of my products. These are seldom more than a few pages long. I've been using Publisher for about a year on and off as small projects pop up and I truly like it's intuitive interface and ease of use. It is, however, way over my head in many if not most of it's features. After a very frustrating session with Photoshop Elements the other day, I'd be quite open to purchasing Affinity Photo, but as I browse it's features and palettes it too will be much more complex than any of my needs would dictate. I am on a very tight marketing budget (basically I can't afford to hire out any of it) and simply don't have the mental bandwidth to take a deep dive into learning complex software. I am far better at pushing materials through machines than pixels through screens.
So, here is my question - Has anyone templated tool palettes in either or both of these programs that are slimmed down versions for us luddites? My needs are quite simple with both programs. I'd like to be able to crop, adjust colors, levels, and maybe swap out backgrounds and then drop them into simple tear sheets that I distribute at shows, or mail to clients. That's pretty much it. The same graphics and layouts would also go on my website(s).
Many thanks for putting up with me - the slowpoke.
Cheers!
-C
charlesfreeborn.com