Duplication Centre

CD, DVD, Blu-ray duplication

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Posts Tagged ‘Design Tips’

Help with Artwork: 13th June 2023

Tuesday, June 13th, 2023

All the templates for every type of printed part are in our artwork section, along with an artwork creation tool that you can download free of charge.

https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/artwork.html

We are aware however, that even with that help, artwork design can sometimes be a daunting prospect and maybe difficult for you to get just as you want it to be.

We can help with this on several levels; for some it may just be getting the text to sit properly on a spine or for others its everything they need help with!

That’s one of the reasons we’re here !!

Drop me an email (una@duplicationcentre.co.uk) if you are struggling with creating your artwork or phone in and we can work out the best sort of help we can offer to you.

We will work with you to create the art that you are happy with and offer screenshot proofs along the way to assist you.

Our basic service is £25 plus vat but for jobs that take up lots of our technicians time, it will a bit more, but we will advise you of that , so there are no surprises!

design office man at computer artistic work

 

Artwork files: 27th March 2023

Monday, March 27th, 2023

This is the third article in our series to help you unlock some of the technical gargon, associated with the Duplciation process.

Artwork Files:

Beware, we are now moving into the area of artwork and the word image no longer relates to a disc image! When talking about artwork, and image is simply a picture, a graphic or photograph

 

PDF

PDF stands for “portable document format.” Adobe Systems designed this format, which has become the standard for exchanging electronic documents. Its a very complex and powerful format used extensively in artwork design and printing, perfect for supplying your artwork supporting the other artwork formats below, as well as special print formats, colours and vector graphics.

 

JPEG,  TIFF, and PNG

These image formats are ideal for photos and similar images containing many colours offering good quality and acceptable sizes are possible. The quality / file size of a jpeg can be altered through the use of compression.

The three formats all vary slightly in the way they apply compression to the images, each with its own advantages. For printing its best to keep the compression at a minimum so the files are larger and better quality.

 

PSD

This format is only used by the graphics programs Photoshop. The files are generally large and contain lots of additional information and layers which are not needed for print. The complexity of the files make them perfect for editing and designing, BUT not ideal for printing. You should save your artwork to PDF or JPEG when ready to submit for printing.

To learn more about artwork formats this article is a good place to start, offering beginner guides to the various types: Further information on artwork formats.

Make Money with Merchandise : 2nd March 2023

Thursday, March 2nd, 2023

What better way to give your fans something to remember a special gig, than to sell them an EP or Full Album of your songs.

Our single card wallets are a really good option for the packaging,  as they are professional quality but very inexpensive for you to buy from us.

You can easily sell these on for £5 …or £10 and get a great margin.

Even if your fans don’t have a cd player, they will love to buy a signed cd, to support you and have the memory of a great night.

With bespoke artwork that you design, our single card wallets are printed on 350gsm FSC Certified and sustainable silk finish card.

We have an artwork creation tool you can download to help you.

Everything you need is in our artwork section:

https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/artwork.html

 

If you have any questions please email una@duplicationcentre.co.uk, and i’ll be very happy to help you .

Our Templates: 25th October 2022

Tuesday, October 25th, 2022

Once you have decided on the cases or wallets that you are going to use for your discs, you will need to design the artwork.

In addition to needing disc artwork ( we call it onbody art) you will need art for the card/paper parts that we will be printing for you.

As well as all the templates in our artwork section on the Website , we have a free artwork creation tool that you can download.

 

The templates are free and available to download as PDF’s or to use in Photoshop and you will be able to upload these directly to us once you have placed your order.

 

Everything that you send us is checked to make sure that it meets our print requirements( we don’t proof read however so you need to spell check before you send it to us !!!)

 

If you have any questions about producing your artwork we are happy to chat on the phone ( 01702 530354) or you can email us : support@duplicationcentre.co.uk

Dont worry if your questions seems small …we are happy to help.

Stunning CD Onbody Print: 27th June 2022

Monday, June 27th, 2022

One of the things we really enjoy when we are processing , printing and packing your orders , is to see the incredible onbody print designs. Here are just a few from the vast array that we have printed.

 

spread on table many cd discs bright and colourful onbody printing

Proofing Your Artwork: 30th March 2022

Wednesday, March 30th, 2022

We offer both soft ( electronic) and hard copy proofs to you, free of charge.

Some customers just want to visualise or in the case of a hard copy, see the quality of their order and how it will actually look when printed.

So for example this customer wanted to see the colour match of his disc to the digipak:

 

CD and printed art on card for proofing colour match

It can be the case that printed parts will not exactly match the colour of the same colour upload, when its printed on a disc…just the fact that they are printed on different mediums can affect the tone of the colour sometimes.

In the case of a hard copy proof we print 2 copies and hold 1 here as a control and post the other to you by Royal Mail.

You then have the option to approve straight away if you are happy with the print or to alter it by uploading new artwork to us.

We will always work with you to get the best result possible for your order.

 

Not everyone wants or needs this so if you do, just need to mention that you would like this in the notes (which is a free field text section) as you check out.

 

We have all sorts of other advice in our artwork section here:

https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/artwork.html

Or you can call us on 01702 530354 and we will be happy to help you.

Thinking Ahead to Christmas: 26th November 2020

Thursday, November 26th, 2020

It’s not too early to start planing for Christmas products for your customers.

Its the perfect excuse to make a new EP,CD or DVD with Christmas material for your customers.

Box of dvds with Christmas theme cover and christmas songbookchriistmas book and dvd wrapped together with red christmas bow

Give us a call if you need any advice or help with your plans or you can get an instant quote & place your order straight away.

https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/prices.html

Follow Us On Instagram:September 10th 2020

Thursday, September 10th, 2020

We would love you to follow us on Instagram where we share Amazing Artwork and Important News.

Dont miss out on seeing some inspiring, cool, thought provoking and sometimes humerous art from customers; along with Important News and Offers.

Follow us on Instagram..and keep in touch …multi coloured shape logo for instagram app

.https://www.instagram.com/duplicationcentreltd/

Why do Colours sometimes look different on my Monitor & Printer:July 13th 2020

Thursday, August 13th, 2020

Why is it that your printed colours look different to what you see on your monitor? Everything looks great on the screen but the prints come out subtly different.

The truth is you will never see a perfect match between images on the screen and images on paper, they are simply put, two very different entity’s.

Colour Space, RGB and CMYK

You monitor image is made us from pixels, these are thousands of tiny lights, and each of these lights can produce around 16 million colours, which is more than our eyes can recognise! These lights are know as  the RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colour space.

A printed image is made up from dots of ink splashed on a piece of paper. We use 4 ink colours for this, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key black. These 4 make up the CMYK colour space. The first three colours are used to reproduce colour, in a similar way to your monitor, the final ‘Key black’ is needed for practical reasons, but its not so important to this topic.

When light hits an colour ink splash on the paper, only the same colour light is reflected, which is a small part of the light which hits is. In contrast the same dot of colour on screen it a light source itself and much stronger than a reflection. So it should already make sense why printed paper would not be as bright on screen, they exist in a smaller range of brightness!

There’s also another restriction on printed images which is because the reflected light is relatively small they only produce a relatively small range of colours, perhaps a few thousand at the most. This is a big reduction from the 16 million available on your monitor! Now you don’t need to worry about this too much, our computers and printers are very good an handling these difficulties, but you should try to keep in mind the subtle details in images can be lost, for example, dark grey text on a black background that is only just visible on screen, will probably as solid black.

You cannot print light!

The next experiment, take a printed image and hold it next to the computer monitor. Now turn the lights off, which one can you see!

The fact is you cannot print light to a piece of paper. So the bright and florescent Reds, Pinks, Yellows, etc which which have so much energy can only be produced with a light behind them. The moment you convert them to print they will be much duller. There are techniques which might help a little when converting them, but really is no fix for this one. If you are designing artwork for print the ideal solution is to use the CMYK colour space from the beginning. This way there are no surprises at the end.

Other factors

The reflection of an ink splash on paper is only a close approximation of the intended colour. Even the type of light bulb in the room your in can affect the colours you see! The same is true for the type or paper you are printing on. So imagine if the the papers are different, or one of them is not paper at all, perhaps a plastic CD. Or maybe the printers are made by different companies, or use different printing technology. Variation is the prints will be expected.

Again, this is not something you need to look at fixing yourself, printers and the things they print on are carefully ‘tuned’ so they produce images as accurately as possible.

The Proof is in the pudding

So you’ve carefully designed some art, keeping in mind all the possible variations, but have you done it right?

You could ask us to check, we’re the experts right? Well yes, but even experts can make mistakes but more importantly this is the first time we have seen you art. We have no way of knowing what effect you are trying to achieve, we don’t know if you have a golden Sun tan or an orange glow, we don’t know if the car in the background should be Green or Blue, or if there way supposed to be the outline of a cat in the shadows.

So who is best placed to check this then? Easy, the same person who knows exactly what the artwork should look like…. You!

I know, we’ve gone full circle, but the solution to this problem is a proof print. Proofs are very common in the print industry and will show you exactly how the print comes out. They are not always necessary, especially if your experienced enough to know what you might receive but if this is you first venture into print, and the details for this one need to be perfect then a proof is definitely the way to go.

You can have a free hard copy proof before we print your full run ….just ask for this in the notes when you order and we will print & send you a proof copy to check and approve before we print the full run.

You can read about this here in our artwork section on the website:

https://www.duplicationcentre.co.uk/artwork.html

 

 

 

CD’s,DVD’s & BLU-RAY’s for CHRISTMAS: 5th December 2019

Thursday, December 5th, 2019

Still time to stock up or buy for the first time CD’s, DVD’s & Blu-Ray’s to sell at Christmas Gigs and Productions.

Last date to get your master and art to us for your order to arrive before Christmas is Midday on Thursday 19th December.

We are always happy to help you out if we can, with tight deadlines …call us on 01702 530354 and see if we can help you.cds on a table varoius christmas prints all festiveSmiling lady with red dress and christmas tree in the backgroundred cd with christmas baubles in plastic case

Father Christmas with arms open and a beautiful Christmas tree next to him

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