I’m not trying to encourage piracy business or anything here, but sometimes you buy or download stuffs from the net legitimately (music, movies, games, and applications) and want to back them up on a CD or a DVD.
The problem is, you are most likely to write on the media itself, the title of the album or the game/movie/application title with a CD/DVD marker.
If you have a colour printer, wouldn’t it be nice to have the original cover displayed on the front of the case? Or maybe a CD/DVD label on top of the media itself? It’ll look nice on your shelf.
The tools that you need to print CD/DVD covers
Now, to be able to print the original CD/DVD covers easily, you need:
- The CD/DVD cover image that can be grabbed from CDCovers.cc
- A free application called Cover XP to print the covers to match your CD/DVD case.
Let’s take an example of a DVD movie that I bought legitimately from a Japanese Anime retail shop in Melbourne, but it didn’t come with the DVD case.
Printing a DVD Cover Guide
So here are the steps that I took to print the DVD cover successfully:
- Go to CDCovers.cc and search for your CD or DVD title (I searched for “death note movie”).
- Matched results will be displayed, based on your keywords search. Simply choose the one that you want from the list.
You can also roll-over your mouse on the parts below the result (after you click a title on the list) to see the image cover quickly. - Click on the “front” at the bottom of the list (it might be different, depends on the availability of that part)
- On the item page, you’ll see the full image (scaled down) in which you can simply right click on the image and save it to your desktop. Do it.
- Now that you’ve got the file, you can’t simply print it. You have to use a CD/DVD cover printing application. CoverXP can print your CD/DVD covers easily and it’s free! So download and install CoverXP from its official site.
- Run CoverXP and then go to the “file” menu and point to the cover image that you’ve just downloaded.
- Afterwards, click on the “cover templates” and choose the one that you need. In my example, I chose dvd.keepcase.single.file. You may need to play around and select different options, though.
Notice how the caption at the bottom changed from “audio.cd.front” to dvd.keepcase.single.file? - Preview the cover as the final step before you go and print the DVD cover.
- Print and enjoy!
Feel free to share the step-by-step easy tutorial to your friends. This is probably the easiest way to print CD and DVD covers that I found (and best of all, it’s free 
)
PS: Depends on your internet connection, reflexes, and printer, this whole process may take more than 5 minutes lol
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Now this is the kinda useful info you don’t find just anywhere, thanks!
nice info bro, pretty cool, thinking that it may be useful for selling downloaded movies (shhh…..)
Never used this kind of tool before. Will definitely check it out!
Interesting. I’ve used illustrator before to physically measure the dimensions of a standard jacket cover, and then reproduce. This seems like a MUCH easier (and faster) way. Very cool…thanks for the share.
WOW.. some useful stuff here! Will try it.
very helpful tool with detail tutorial by you, thank’s
Hope you can utilize it for a better use
My requirement at the moment is find a software that can print a cover on CD.I mean a CD label. not the CD cover. Is there any tools to do that?
Hm.. if I was not mistaken, there is an option on the CoverXP application mentioned on this post, to actually print the labels on the CD. You can still get the CD label cover on the site mentioned too.
Give it a go and let us know how it goes!
I have to check out CDcovers.cc, it sounds most interesting.
I checked out the site, it seems to have every movie imaginable listed!
That’s cool to hear. So far I’ve only used it to print 2 covers, so it’s good to know that they have lots of options
Wow thats kinda nice huh.. by the way who likes Death Note here?
Me (obviously from the post) heh heh
it’s cool eh and even easier to make CD cover than using photoshop
Uh, i’m also a fan of Death Note Movie
Hehe you don’t even have to design the cover
Just do a few clicks and you are all set!
do you need lightscribe in order to do this?
-jack
Lighscribe? Sorry but I’ve never heard of it. So I guess you don’t need one to achieve it
Very cool and interesting topic thanks for posting.
Hectic Capiznon Bloggers 2009´s last blog post..How Capiz Blogger Promote their blogs?
Thanks man, very useful stuff. I have a question: do you know what kind of paper is used in most CD covers? Did you use normal paper to print your cover?
I do (or did). Still works very well anyway unless if you really want it on a hard paper. It’ll look better but whether it’s unnecessary or not, it’s up to you!