In Drupal 6 you could do it with hook_form_alter()s in template.php or a helpful little module called Node and Comments Form Settings. With 7...I have no idea, but apparently not quite the way I've done it before.
I probably need to learn a lot more about preprocessing and processing to figure it out. I have given up for the moment and am just going to adjust the form with css, which means I'm stuck with the default labels and the necessity to css hide the silly input filter box because I can't unset the damn thing!
So other than that the layout is mostly done, I've put some links in (remind me to export the views if it looks like an upgrade will blow the place up), there is slightly less than dummy content, and I have an art gallery to build. Then I throw the thing online and see how it goes.