Make Your Own CD Covers

There are 2 ways to make your own cd covers. You can choose to create the image and print it on a specially made label that sticks to the CD. Or you can choose to use a LightScribe enabled CD burner.

Creating an image and printing it onto a label is the most common way. It doesn't require any kind of special hardware other then a printer(which most people have). To make the whole job smoother you can buy CD labels that are made to stick to the CD, but these aren't completely necessary. Once you have your image selected or once you have created it, all you have to do is hit the Print button and you will have your very own custom CD label.

The other option is to use a LightScribe enabled CD burner. This option is less common because it requires a special type of CD burner to be able to do this. LightScribe is a fairly new technology and it has both its advantages and disadvantages. It's great if you don't have a printer. A LightScribe drive works by using the same laser that burns the music/data onto the CD. Once you have the music/data copied onto the disc, eject the disc from your computer, flip it over and close the tray. The laser will burn an image onto the top side of the CD creating an image.

There are obvious downsides to using this method though. For one, you have to have a special CD burner. Not all CD burners have this feature with them. Second, the laser can only burn the image in black, there is no color option. The quality of the image isn't all that great either compared to what you can produce printing a label.

Fortunately, there are a lot of programs out on the market that allow you to print a label for a CD. In this tutorial, we will be using the Nero Software Suite to make your own CD cover. Nero offers a trial download of their software so that you can see if you like it before you decide to buy.

Head on over to the Nero site and download the trial version of their Nero 8 Ultra Edition. Once you have done that, go ahead and install it onto your computer.

When you open up the Nero StartSmart application, you should find yourself on the default Start Page. At the top of the window should be 5 sections to the program's features. We will want to be creating a CD cover, so click on Create and Edit. A section should load up with a few options inside of it. Click on the Create Disc Label or Cover option.

You should now find yourself inside of the Nero CoverDesigner portion of the software. There should be a New Document box on your screen. This box contains templates for many different types of CDs as well as DVDs. You can also select from a few premade images as well for your CD cover.
However, we want to be adding our own image and text to our CD cover. The default settings should be just fine for what we want to accomplish, so go ahead and click Ok.

You should now find yourself with a new document and a square blank template. At the bottom of the window should be a menu bar with CD Booklet, CD Booklet(Rear), CD Inlay, and Disc 1 for options. We want to be creating a CD cover so click on Disc 1. The square template should now resemble a CD if you have followed the directions. Now it is time to create our CD label using an image.

Go ahead and find an image that you want to use if you haven't already. On the left hand side of the window in the Nero CoverDesigner should be a menu bar with a few options. For now, the option that we want is the Image tool. It should be the 2nd option from the bottom of the menu bar. If you have trouble finding it, just mouseover the buttons and a little box should popup telling you which option is what.

Once you have found the Image tool, click it and a familiar Open dialog box should popup. Go ahead and find the image on your computer for which you want to use for the CD cover. You can either double click on the image or just select it and click on Open. You should now have the Image tool activated and there should be a box on your screen and in the middle should be a plus sign along with a camera. This box is where your image is going to be placed on the CD. For now you can just click anywhere on the CD as there are options to align the image vertically and horizontally. Once you click and place your image, you should see it on the template along with 8 black squares around it. These squares allow you to resize the image vertically, horizontally and diagonally.

If your image is just the right size and you are happy with it but notice it isn't perfectly center, there is a tool to fix that. There should 2 menu bars at the top of the window. The tool we want to use is on the 2nd bar and it is comprised of 7 different green icons. These are your image alignment options. If you mouseover each one you will notice that there are Left, Horizontal Center, Right, Top, Vertical Center, Bottom, and Advanced Alignment Options. To center your image in the middle of the CD, click the Horizontal Center and Vertical Center options. This should perfectly align your image to the exact center of the CD. To resize your image, just mousover one of the black squares, click on it and drag the mouse to resize the image. Once it is the right size, if needed, use the above method to center it on the CD.

Along with creating a cover for your CD, Nero's CoverDesigner allows you to create a cover for the CD case as well as a CD inlay. To create any of these other designs, instead of selecting Disc 1 on the menu bar at the bottom of the window, select whichever section you would like to create. Note: You can also hold the Ctrl key to select multiple sections to show up on the screen.

There is also an extremely quick way to add an image to your CD. From the File menu, select New Cover From Picture. Navigate to the picture on your computer and Open it. Inside the New Document dialog box, select your template and click Ok. Nero will automatically stretch(if needed) your image to fix the entire CD while keeping it vertically and horizontally aligned. You can then choose to add custom text, add more images or draw your own.

Nero offers a lot of ways to customize and setup your CD cover. You can choose to play around and see what does what or browse through their help files if you can't find what you want.

LightScribe is a pretty neat technology. It uses the same laser that burns the music/data onto your CD to create a label for it as well. If you have a LightScribe enabled CD drive you can download software to burn a label onto your CD. You can find the software to use this feature here. All you have to do is pick a design, add your custom text/images, preview it and print. Make sure that your CD is label side down otherwise the feature won't work and you could end up damaging your CD.

To create a label, make sure you download the LightScribe Template Labeler. You may have to download the LightScribe System Software as well to get the software to work on your computer. Once everything is installed, start up the Template Labeler. You will receive a prompt to insert a LightScribe CD label down into your LightScribe enabled CD burner. Note: You have to buy LightScribe CDs as well as a LightScribe CD drive to create a label. A regular CD will not work in a LightScribe CD drive and a LightScribe CD will not work in a regular CD drive.

After the prompt to insert your CD, you will be shown a window to select a template for your CD. There are about 15 templates to start out with, although you can download more from the web. If you want just a blank template, scroll down in the list on the left hand side and select the blank CD image. In the main window you will see a CD with the words Click to add text along the top and bottom of the CD. In the middle should be the text, Click to add image. To change the text simply click on it and type. You will type the text in the left hand side of the window. You can also change the font type, size, decoration and alignment here as well.

To add an image to the CD, click the Click to add image text. On the left hand side of the window, click Open, browse to the image on your computer and open it. The image will show up next to the Open and Clear options as well as showing up on the CD. You can use the Zoom feature to adjust the size of the image or you can select Fit and the software will automatically resize the image to fit the CD. You can also Center, Rotate Left and Rotate Right the image.

Once you are satisfied, select Preview and Print at the bottom of the window below the CD image. A box will popup showing you what the CD label will look like. You can choose which drive you want to use, the number of copies you want to print, the contrast level of the image and the color of your disc. The lower the contrast level the quicker the burning will take place but at the same time you sacrifice quality. Once you have everything setup, click Print and wait for the burner to finish.