We have a pretty big program book, so we use Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign.  Recently we've gotten a local graphic designer to put it together for us in exchange for a full page ad and her sponsorship of the show. She also designs our posters and other publicity, we pay for the printing only. In exchange there is a small "designed by" on each piece. It's great professional looking stuff that really isn't costing us $ and giving her lots of publicity for her firm.

SopMBA

PhotoShop isn't really good for most playbills, as it is really a graphic design package... we use it in conjunction with PageMaker (a page layout package). We are able to do this because Chris is a designer by trade; the two programs together will run you over $1,000 if purchased new. You can get a product that costs a lot less with something like MS Publisher and still get produce a nice looking playbill. Depends on your budget and expertise. PageMaker and PhotoShop are not entry-level programs and the learning curve can be very steep.

I've not spend much time with design software in quite a few years, limiting myself pretty much to PhotoShop Elements for my photography. Anyone else out there using a package with a smaller learning curve and a better price point? MS word will do the trick, but has quite a few limitations when doing page layout.

We use Microsoft Word and Publisher.  Publisher is better than Word, as it is a desktop publishing application, but it is also a little trickier to use.

As far as design goes, our Managing Director is fairly creative and she does the whole thing.