CD printing from Photoshop

David Burren
September 2006

In a recent comment in this site's news section, I mentioned that it's possible to print directly to CD/DVDs from Photoshop.

Our in-house CD printer is an Epson R800, but there are quite a few printers available with the ability to print on CDs. Note that printing adhesive labels and sticking those to disks is NOT something we recommend. Not only can the acidic glue eventually damage the data layer of a CD, but if the label comes off the disk while spinning at high speed it will damage the drive. It's much safer to print the label directly on the disk. If you are creating archive disks for yourself it's probably enough to hand-write a label on the disk (but even then, using printable disks can provide a safer "painted" layer for the ink to sit on).

Choosing software

So, once you decide to print the CDs you need some software to generate the labels and print them. Epson provides the EPSON Print CD software for this purpose, and it does a reasonable job of laying out text and graphics, adjusting for different disk sizes, and printing the result. There are a few other options, but I haven't explored them all yet.

But while Print CD handles the layout quite well, it doesn't give you good control over the colours. As you'll see in the dialog on the right, it only allows you to set the "Color Correction" value to a range between Light and Strong. It's not possible to disable Print CD's manipulation of the colour. It's not clear exactly what that manipulation is, but it seems to do different things with different images. This makes it impossible to profile with colour-management.

Printing from any software

However it is easy to print CDs on the R800 directly from Photoshop, and this makes it possible to profile the printing. Actually, it is possible to print them from any application, but Photoshop and InDesign are the ones we use here. Both of these support the use of profiles, and it simplifies the process for us (rather than using Print CD) as we're usually starting off with artwork in one of these programs.
Epson's documentation doesn't mentioning printing disks from anything other than Print CD, but it's not hard. Here's how:

• You need to send an A4 page to the manual-feed printer queue.
• The artwork needs to be in the right position on the page to line up with the disk in its carrier. With our R800 the centre of the disk is approximately 64.5 mm from the top of the page, and 72 mm from the left.
  These measurements are not obvious from examining the disk carrier: they've been found through experimentation.
• You must select one of the following media types: CD/DVD or CD/DVD Premium Surface.
  Only the "Premium" option will produce a decent gamut of colours: the non-Premium option is only useful for quick drafts. Unfortunately the Premium prints take a long time to dry.

That's it!
You need to be careful to mask the output into a circle so the printer doesn't spread ink over the disk carrier and through into the printer internals, but that's not hard. If you'd like to build on what we've done here, you could start with this Photoshop template. It's sized for the CDs we use here: you may need to change the mask size for different types of media.

Generating a colour profile

Once you can print from Photoshop, generating a colour profile is a very similar process to that used for normal printing. We supply a DBP_CDDVD_Target.tif file in our ZIP archive of target TIFFs. Whatever software you use, you just need to get the file printing onto the right part of the page to fit onto the disk. Print the disk, let it dry, and then send it to us as per our normal paper profiling. See this page for further details.

Note that there's not a lot of room on a 12cm disk (also there's more work involved at our end to measure the target) and thus we use a smaller target with fewer colours than for normal papers. But rest assured, there are enough colours on the disk to generate good profiles.

The gamut of printable disks is much smaller than photographic paper, but if you use Photoshop's soft-proofing functions with the right profile, you'll be able to see how your image will turn out. Using a Perceptual rendering intent usually does an excellent job. Remember to use the Simulate Paper White function when soft-proofing, and hide all non-Photoshop windows (and the Photoshop palettes/etc) so the only thing you can see is the image. That will let you accurately judge the final result.

"Silver" disks

Disks are available with white surfaces (with a variety of finishes) and also with silver surfaces. Each type of disk will result in slightly different colour behaviour, and thus you will probably find it's worthwhile generating a separate profile for each disk type (just as you use a different profile for each paper you use).

In the image above you can see three disks: one with the target colour patches, and two with the same image that's printed on the page underneath. One of those disks is white, while the other's silver. The silver disks are interesting: if you've used the Kodak Professional Endura metallic photographic papers you'll be familiar with the way the image highlights take on a glow as the disk/paper is moved in your hands. But they might not suit everyone!

Printing CDs on other printers

Similar methods of printing and profiling CDs and DVDs should be possible with other non-Epson printers, and possibly with the printers built into some CD/DVD replicators (as long as "automatic" colour manipulation can be disabled).

Even if you're not fussed about getting accurate colours on your printed disks, knowing you have options to the manufacturer's disk-printing software may be of interest... Hopefully this information will inspire you to find out what's possible!