Highlighting some amazing customer design.
This single card wallet and cd onbody printing are so seamless its hard to see where each start and finish.
Go to our free online artwork creation tool and the templates that are easy to download to help you with you with your design.
This article is the second in our series to help you understand some of the terminology used in the duplication process
Beware, we are now moving into the area of artwork and the word image no linger relates to a disc image! When talking about artwork, and image is simply a picture, a graphic or photograph
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.
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.
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.
You should always have labels on your CDs.
Why?
For professionalism and so people know which way the disc should be facing when putting it in a CD player.
However, there are four methods for printing labels on your CDs. Which one is best for you?
Let’s review the four options and decide:
Lithographic (offset) printing
Lithographic printing is where your artwork is placed on a processing plate using a chemical treatment. The plate is then ‘offset’, or imposed onto a rubber blanket cylinder. This is then pressed onto the surface of the CD to create the print.
Overall, this process is great if you need more than 1000 discs, however it typically isn’t the cheapest option.
Thermal transfer printing
Thermal transfer printing is when each colour is set onto a transfer ribbon and then applied beneath a heated print head. This creates a seal, making the disc waterproof and smudge free.
Silkscreen printing
This process passes ink through a monofilament screen, where each colour is applied separately.
Inkjet printing
Inkjet printing entails printing directly onto a specially prepared disc. After that, the disc is covered with a UV-resistant lacquer to prevent fading and scratches.
Overall, each one of these four CD label printing techniques is a viable option, but hopefully with the guidance above you can narrow down which printing option works best for your project. We understand that price and quality are usually the determining factors for printing on CDs so we tried to focus primarily on that.