What size telescope would I need to see objects the way they appear in magazine articles?

Unfortunately, depending on exactly which images you are talking about, you need a telescope of at least 12-inches aperture and above all, either a film camera or a CCD camera.

The problem is that the eye cannot 'integrate' faint light for more than a few hundredths of a second and faint galaxies and details require many seconds or minutes to build up any kind of image.