Need page layout capability

Hi,

I am using wordpress with mostly static pages and inputing significant amounts of text and images for detailed reviews and descriptions.

My problem is the difficulty in trying to achieve good page layouts in WordPress… decided to use it because of the benefits of being able to change the information dynamically, but the clunkiness of trying to get things where I want them on the page is driving me a little crazy.

I have tried a table plugin called wp-table, but this is also very limited as I can not choose to turn off borders, use different colours etc.

Does anyone know of a plugin which will allow me to work on the layouts more easily?..or is there some trick to using the standard WP features that I have missed?