designing label templates, sleeve artwork and stuff isn't really that hard. you just need to figure things out with human logic ;-)

the tips about vector/bitmap gfx are bang on - make your label artwork as bitmap and all the text in vector.
when you make a new label, start it off as an RGB file with at least a 300dpi resolution. it's lighter this way for you to edit the image, and you can convert it to CMYK when the shit is finished for the print job. so.. when you have the bitmap groundwork done, convert to CMYK and EXPORT it from photoshop or whatever you have - to illustrator/freehand or whatever you have and knock all the text on top as vectors. when this is all done, you should be able to export or save the image to a TIFF or PDF form, ready for the print shop.

DO NOT - i repeat DO NOT give JPEG files for the print shops, as JPEG is a compressed format. if you check out any form of jpeg image from the net and zoom really close, you'll notice that it will start to smudge really soon, and that's not what you will want. i always give TIFF or PDF files if possible, because they retain the quality as it's meant to be.