CD Printing For a Better Look to Your CD Presentation

CD printing is an allured way to add a good look to your CD presentation. Merely it opened the door to all kinds of new applications that we see today. You can select an appropriate option that best suits to your artwork design. The printing of artwork on the CD face i.e., CD printing gives a professional finish to your product. The most frequent methods employed in CD printing are:

Silkscreen printing
Litho printing
Digital printing
Thermal printing
Inkjet printing

Silk Screen Printing can be employed where high-impact color images are required. It is a stencil, where ink passes through the unblocked areas of mesh. The mesh used here is original silk so called silkscreen printing. The screening machines used to carry the printing usually have round indentations in a table top for the discs to be automatically set into and these are controlled by robotic CNC s.

The artwork being copied is transferred onto films of up to five colors each color being on a separate film. After pushing the ink onto the disc top UV light is applied to cure the ink. The silk screen printing is the process traditionally used to print 'retail' CDs that you might buy in the shops. Silk screen printing is mainly used for designs containing one to six spot/pantone colors. The screen printing technique is bounded with some limitations such as tints, vignettes, blends and some particular complex designs which cannot be printed as usual. While printing the screen, one should be even sure to set trapping because the artwork may overprint where it should knock out and vice versa. Also the scanned images should not be saved as RGB as this will cause images to be colored separately contrary to your requirement.

The artwork for silk screen printing can be provided in modes such as Quark press, adobe photo shop, adobe illustrator or a high resolution PDF etc. The quality of printing follows high standards and used for very bright images or spot color jobs. A silk screen print is usually 85-100lpi (lines per inch). This is a cost effective means for runs of 250 + units.

Litho Printing offers more color resolution and finer color control than the silk screen printing technique.. It is often known as OFFSET printing. These offset printing machines use CMYK (5 separate colors) + white to give you the full color range. This works best and stands ideal for realistic photo images. The inks are applied onto the disc top by rollers. Offset print is able to show smaller text and details of an image smoothly and clearly.

The 4 plates (CMYK) need to be manufactured from your original artwork. Each plate is used to transfer a linked image on to a rubber blanket that has been mounted on a cylinder. The rubber blanket then transfers or offsets the linked image onto the disc as it passes through the press; the 4 colors combine to create a high resolution picture on the face of the disc. Thus photographic images, skin tones, full color graphics, and text are improved with this print option. This too offers high quality printing and is a cost effective means for runs of 500+ units. But this is bounded limiting to use pantone colors because the colors are made from CMYK process.

Digital Printing is a professional alternative to OFFSET printing. It stands ideal for crystal clear pictures of photographic quality for the most subtle color shades and graduations. It is faster and flexible too. It uses a transfer process to reproduce a very high quality CMYK print. Also used for print serialization that is digital printing allows each disc to be personalized with name, number, address, barcode etc. It gives an impressive high resolution high glass print. It is a cost effective means for 300+ units or so. But it is also set bound with limitation such as special colors such as pantone, HKS etc that is these colors cannot be printed with the digital printing process.

Thermal Printing is a simple and finest procedure that is used for printing single color on to the disc surface directly (usually black). The media used is normally a silver or white surface. This stands ideal for fast turn over durable results.

Inkjet Printing follows the same procedure employed for standard desktop printers. It is recommended for full color designs and that is to only limited areas of block colors. Glossy and water resistant discs can be used which gives a glossy finish and allow colors to show more vibrantly.

Advantages Of CD Printing:

The dead smart techniques mentioned above provided a cutting edge for today's cut throat competition with their beautiful appliances. The CD printing saves your money up to 50% if you purchase an inkjet printable disc rather than buying both discs and adhesive labels. It enhances your convenience too as there is no need to deal with label placement any more. And it's important to note that it avoids damaging of your CD drives that occur due to peeling off the labels from heat etc.

For information on CD printing be sure to visit BisonDisc.com, an industry leader in CD and DVD duplication, replication and copying for professionals in the music and TV industry.