1. Thermal Printed (single color) projects: The surface of the CD is silver. It is best to print on UNDER 25% of the Disc surface for best results.
2. Inkjet Printed 4-color Labels - The labels are white.
3. Digital Printed 4-color Discs - the surface of the Disc is white.
4. All thermal 1-color projects should be designed with 100% solid red, blue, or black color. If percentages (screens) of color are required, please choose our on-disc Digital Color Printing option or our Inkjet Color Printing option.
5. Stay away from dainty serif fonts for small text - you won't get the best results.
6. If you use images/graphics of some sort - 300dpi unless you really know what you are wanting to do and the result.
7. Don't over do it - your CD spends most of its life spinning in a drive where nobody sees it or can read it (which is where we want it, right?). Simple, distinctive designs have the most effect on the user in the time they load it from package to player. Most commercial CDs are 3-colors or less. Half of those are 2-colors or less. People read your print and it is the first thing they see - put your extra muscle into your insert design.
8. If this is your first project it is well worth the investment of consulting with an experienced designer. You are spending good money on your project, and the difference between nice and wow could just be buying an hour of their time.
9. We never judge the artistic merits of a design, so we will never catch things like typos, misplacements, etc., and things that are ugly to us are very beautiful to others and visa versa. The time we spend with your artwork is to guarantee the best mechanical/manufacturing outcome. Be sure to review, review, and review again, before you send your final artwork off to us.

• DupeMyCDs templates must be used to create your artwork. Failure to follow all template guidline specifications and instructions may result in additional charges and production delays.
• Paper or pdf proofs of the final design should be supplied along with your artwork files. (color proofs are preferred)
• All fonts used in your design should be included with your art files. A postcript font must include both the screen and printer font files.
• Use actual versions of bold and italic fonts. Do not add bold and italic "attributes" to fonts in Quark or Pagemaker.
• All placed art must be supplied even if the artwork is embedded in your files.
• We accept files created in the following design applications: MAC versions up to: Quark 6.5 Adobe CS2 applications (Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign) Macromedia Freehand MX Pagemaker 7 PC versions up to: Quark 6.5 Adobe CS2 applications (Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign) Macromedia Freehand 9 CorelDraw X3
• All haftone (rastered) images should be at least 300 dpi high resolution. Artwork that is below 300 dpi should not be used (ie. art pulled of the web, low resolution scans or digital camera shots) Increasing the dpi of low resolution art to 300dpi in Photoshop will NOT improve it’s quality.
• All Photoshop Templates were created at 600 dpi. This was done to improve the quality of type that is set in the Photoshop. You may need to increase the resolution of images being used in your artwork to 600 dpi before placing them into the template to assure accurate sizing.

Basic Information - CD Physical Printing Area

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As you can see from the above diagram, there are physical limitations as to how much of the CD surface we can actually print. Keep these values in mind when designing your artwork to avoid having parts of your design come up unprintable - like print getting cut off or part of an image missing.

• You will also notice that we don't print all of the way to the edges of the CD or all of the way into the center.
• The mirror band can be printed over, but the stacking ring can't.

You can find our CD Printing Templates here.

More Information
Please download and review our complete printing specifications here. If you need additional information, please feel free to contact us.