DISC PRINTING SPECIFICATIONS
This section contains important specifications regarding your disc label printing—what gets printed directly on the disc.
Disc labels can be printed via a silk-screen process (like t-shirts), or with an offset printing process (like magazines, posters, and paper parts for disc packaging). Offset printing is generally a little more expensive than silk-screen printing, but offers higher resolution for full-color disc artwork (175 lpi vs. about 100 lpi for silk-screen printing). Silk-screen printing tends to work better for artwork that involves blocks of solid color.
Keep in mind that when printing on a reflective surface like a CD or a DVD, the results will be a little different than if you had printed the same thing on white paper. Expect some color variation from what you see on your or your designer’s computer screen, or on any printout you may have looked at. If exact color matching is important to you, it is recommended that you specify a white background be printed on the disc. This will more closely approximate the effect of printing on white paper.
Text size should be no smaller than 4 pts. (7 pts. if reversed), and lines should be no less than 0.25 pts. wide (1.5 pts. if reversed).
Be sure your files are properly trapped, if necessary. Trapping should be 0.25 pt. (or 0.004 in. or 0.10 mm) between colors.
There should be no bleed on your CD label files. Artwork should not extend beyond the borders of the disc.
If you are sending image files only, your disc label artwork should be 118 mm in diameter. Do not represent the center hole with a circle of any color. Your artwork should be a solid circle. We will knock out the center circle when we import your graphic into our templates.
Your image file(s) should be at least 300 DPI at output size.
EPS or TIFF images only. No JPG, GIF, PICT, BMP, PNG. PSD images can probably be dealt with, but be sure to turn off any unused layers.
For your disc artwork, you may use Pantone or CMYK colors or any combination of Pantone and CMYK colors. There is no extra charge for the use of Pantone colors on your disc artwork (the same cannot be said for the artwork for your paper parts, however). The only charges are film costs, and we need to print one film for each color used, whether it’s a Pantone or a CMYK color.
If your disc artwork is full color, make sure that your files are in CMYK mode - not RGB! Also, note whether you will need a white background. Remember, the disc surface is reflective silver. If there is white in your design, you will need a white background screened on your discs.
We prefer that your artwork be created in Adobe InDesign. We can also take files created with Quark Xpress (version 7.3 or earlier), Illustrator or Photoshop. We don’t take Corel Draw files, PageMaker files, or Freehand files. Please contact us if you intend to use software not listed here.
Do not use any phrase in your artwork indicating in what country the discs are made, printed, manufactured, or packaged. Specifically, the phrase “Made in the USA” or anything similar should not be present on your discs.