We have the Epson Stylus R380 Photo printer. Epson Stylus Photo R380, Overview - Product Information - Epson America, Inc.

Lacks the scanner, but I'm impressed by the results! Then again, everything beats the CD Stomper we used to have!

We also use Taiyo Yuden printable DVDs, as per glorious suggestions on this very board. We got a pack o' 100 o' them from the Musician's Friend website for just over $40 USD.

Best of luck with your new venture!

Thanks guys - all brilliant advice!

...now to check the 'packaging' thread about 'luxury' cases I can present the final DVD in...

i have been using a canon mp610 and have been getting excellent results all round.

i also have a CISS for it and the setup does not fault.

Thanks for the tip Dany. The CISS is a godsend isn't it? From what I've read on forums the 'bulk ink' that comes with most CISS setups is nearly as good as the authentic ink.

Hi Peter,

I currently use the R265 with CISS system and the quality results still amaze me.

I would suggest printing the covers yourself, if you are happy doing the artwork you can get amazing results using Glossy A4 and the epson printers. Same goes for the discs.

It is all about the resolution to get the images to print nicely (400 pixel per inch) and you are laughing.

I spent a long time trying loads of different paper, quality against cost etc and the best I have found is from Novatech in the UK.

50 A4 glossy sheets for a fiver and you will be impressed with the output.

Thanks for the advice Vince - much appreciated. I had a look at the Novatech website, is this the particular paper you use?:

Novatech Premium Glossy A4 Photo Paper (50 Sheets) 200g : novatech.co.uk : NOV-CP00A4

Thats the one....

Great, thanks Vince I'll be having some of that.

Am watching a Photoshop tutorial from scratch at the moment so I can hopefully design my own cases. Can't really find any good Mac software that will do it automatically. Need to learn Photoshop anyway to be able to spruce up images for my website I'm creating myself. I might have a look at some Windows software that can do DVD covers - I can run Windows programs on my Mac also.

Any recommendations for DVD case cover software anyone please?

I think most of us use graphics packages such as photoshop or paint shop pro and create a basic template that you can reuse time and again...

Measure your DVD box case (the area where the cover will go in only) and this will give you the measurements to create a blank dvd cover.

Set it to 400 dpi (or pixels per inch) and then add a 2 pixel border to the image (very helpful for cutting down afterwards). Then, measure where the spine edges will be and add these lines (most packages will let you hide the layer that you put these on) and this will allow you to hide before you print...you dont want those lines on the final cover (but you do want the outside border ones)...

Take some time to learn about layers. This will help you make a good template as you can just open the text on a layer and change a name etc or title

Apart from that, get some inspiration from looking at your own DVD collection (lets face it, the guys who design these should be pretty good!) and also take some input from looking around online.

Remember, you dont have to make something that looks like a universal production... white space can be your friend, less can always be more and one suggestion, use some nice handwriting fonts, shades of grey and different sizes for first names and surnames...

If you do not have any fonts and you want some I have a whole pile of handwriting fonts I have collected from freeware sites so send me an email to vince @ creative-experiences.net and I will zip them up and send them if you want them.

Brilliant Vince, you're a gentleman thanks. Working through these tutorials at the moment and just noticed how I can specify the resolution, which as you described I should adjust to 400 pixels/inch. Thanks again. Looks like a pretty intense couple of days I have ahead of me :o)

Another plus for the Taiyo Yuden watershields and epson printers (RX680). The combination prints a beautiful durable DVD and the epsons do a great job at a very low price. I too design my own DVD covers.

Good luck.

I easily spent 20hrs on my first real DVD cover. My example above is virtually the same, except because I used layers in PaintShopPro, I just swapped out all the color elements, created new boxes, etc and then it was set.

Now getting the whole mess to print off correctly on my printer turned out to be a multi-hour battle. I eventually gave up and went back to OfficeDepot's print center. But their colors were VASTLY different than my monitor or printer. I have yet to find a way to solve that issue.

Hi Jason,

I know what you mean about the colour difference at professional print houses....I had this issue when I made my brochures in Paint Shop Pro and then saved them as uncomrpressed TIFF files for the printers.

The colours were very different. I managed to get around this by saving the files as Photo Shop files within Paint Shop Pro and then opening them in Photoshop and saving them as TIFF files there.

No idea what was going on and why it worked (or didnt work just from paint shop pro) but I am no expert in photoshop but I am very confident in paint shop pro.

I must admit I have never had any issues printing my box covers from paint shop pro and using my Epson R265 printer...what printer are you using?

My printer is a HP PSC950. I think the problem printing probably stemmed from me actually telling the driver that I was using a specific HP color photo glossy printing paper. When I did that it seems like the printer refused to print on 1/2" of the paper on two sides (it had super huge margins). That was a while ago, so I don't remember if the problem was the printer shrinking the image to fit in its margins, or just cropping off the edges of the image.

If you use a Mac check out Disc Cover 2 from Belight - I love it! Easy, quick, and trouble free.

I've been looking around here for printer recommendations and I just left a post elsewhere about this software - people are going to think I work for them - I don't (but if they want to offer me a job...)