Ok let me get this right - It sounds to me, like you are talking about the images in the design?
Skinning and Design are totally separate in a sense to the adding of content. So you are asking about two things, but perhaps thinking you can do them all in one.
If you want to manage how the design is - you do that using a html editor or notepad -I use Dreamweaver. That is because the skin represents all the pages of the site, so you have to think - what do you want for the pages, and what do you want specifically for a single page.
A good example I can think of is having a front page that is different to the sub pages. You want to chane this page, but keep the design the same in the rest of the site. To do this - you have two options, you can make a *home page* skin and a *sub page* skin. Each one is slightly different, but they are still created with your html editor.
Now, sometimes people don't want to make the skin or don't know how so they use images - I think if you wanted to use 4 or 5 across, you would need to put them all in a table, but sometimes if I have that situation, I will actually merge them together so they are one image. (that's the easiest way I can think of)
Or, if you really want to put each image in it's own box/image module or text html, you would be required to use that Home Page skin idea, and make 4 panes across - and then put the content into each of of those panes. Or you can simply add them to the skin and save the file and they will appear as part fo the skin.
I just want to tell you that sometimes you have to think of squares and rectangles when designing a DotNetNuke site.
So there are a couple of choices I have given ,based on your information and I hope I have clarified it a little bit so you don't get confused as to what is done via the skin and what is done via the website when logged in as administrator.
Nina Meiers