Confused about what I need for a good web store-pluginwise
 

I want to set up a sight to sell photos. I have been searching plugins and there sure are a lot of them available. In fact, I have become quite confused. I have some questions...
1) Does the plugin operate totally independant of the theme? In other words does the plugin affect the theme layout?
2) Is it best to find a plugin to create a gallery which I think would act as a store front and then find a seperate plugin to manage sales of these item. I think this would be referred to as a checkout plugin? I am having a hard time finding a well layed out gallery.
3) Or is it better to find a plugin, such as one referred to as a store plugin, and have this one plugin do all the work.
4) I have some pages created already such as a gallery page. But I see that a store plugin will create its own pages such as a product page. So, if I use a store plugin does it create all the pages I would need for my site? The pages I created become irrelavant?

The whole ecommerce for WordPress is rather varied. There are plugins that do create their own pages and there are plugins like PHPurchase that let you drop an add to cart or buy now button in any post or page and then there are services you can subscribe to that integrate with WordPress.

What you choose depends on how many products you have to sell, what payment gateway you want to use, how you want the products displayed etc. As you have found this can be quite a process and there is no single answer.

Thanks for your reply. My biggest problem has been a lack of communication. I have posted many questions to webhostingforum, wordpressforums and here. I am not getting squat for replies. Thanks for answering.