astro, what an interesting idea! If it looks like I will be sinking over $500 for a book (and I don’t know that yet) then yes, I might as well consider buying the equipment and doing it myself! Yes, I have a decent scanner. And I’m quite the Photoshop goddess (well, not really, but I like to say so) so I have no problem handling graphics.
I am primarily on a Mac, is there Mac software that would do the same thing as MS Desktop? I already have Quark (not that I really know how to use it) but I am not sure that is too “high end” though. (I obviously need to learn a lot still!)