You don't have to use an expensive software package for good results. Most of the top word processing programs around today (Lotus SmartSuite/Word Pro, OpenOffice, Star Office, Word Perfect Office or even M$ Office/Word, etc.) have more than enough desktop publishiing features to do a good job. Even things like PrintMaster (which I have used for years) or PrintShop could do an excellent job. And I would use something like IrfanView (new version just released) for basic graphic/photo file manipulation - seldom need anything fancier than that.
. Where you might want to use a top-end desktop publishing package like PageMaker, Quark, etc. is when you want to farm the printing out to a commercial house and you need to do color matching and/or want to do the color separations yourself.
. If you are into Linux, you could also play with Scribus for free. It's not on the level of the Win stuff YET, but it's not going to cost you $3 or 400. either... Also be sure to find out what your commercial printer can work with in terms of file formats. No sense working with something that can't output the format you need.
.bh.