CD printing and DVD printing are really great. Take a blank piece of media and print artwork on it and make it yours. 

Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

There's a little more to it than that, so we wanted to give you a little extra information so that you know what kind of print options are available in the market and how to get the best out of those.

The major types of print available are:

• Offset - a very similar process to printing magazines and other professionally printed goods.
• Screen - tried, trusted and very cost effective.
• Thermal Photoprint - High resolution thermal print method that's great for shorter runs (<1000)
• Inkjet - New high end production machinery can give some startlingly good results.

I'm not going to be 100% positive and Pollyanna in this post. I may even be slightly acidic about some print methods, but I would rather tell you the truth so that you can confidently choose a print method which meets your needs and which will give you a result about which you are happy. There are quality differences.

You're striving to present a quality impression to your clients, aren't you? You wouldn't like to drag that effort down with an inferior result, would you? Don't waste your design expense on inferior output.

Here are the cold, hard facts:

Offset

Probably the best printing method for four colour (CMYK) artwork. 

You've seen how smooth and crisp the print is in good quality magazines and catalogues, haven't you? You've seen unbelievably perfect print in high-end coffee table books and custom printed work from Japan. That's what this is about. 

The majority of offset print machines in the market are descendants of one company in Japan. The technology is incredibly advanced and unbelievably fast. The ink is delivered in a layer only 7 µm thick - that's about one-tenth the thickness of a human hair!

What this means for you is super-fine resolution - better than a true uniform 600 dpi at worst and over 2560 lines per inch for text nominally - and a stunning result. 

The downside of this is that large areas of solid colour aren't dense enough. However, our process includes an additional stage where an additional plate can be added - an extra silk screen actually - to enhance those weaker areas. Better yet, we do that for you at no extra charge. We can help you with technical advice during the design stage to make your artwork look utterly fabulous.

Almost all of our CD and DVD replication projects are offset printed. We also have it available for CD and DVD printing for projects larger than 500 units. 

In short, very good for most purposes.

Screen

Definitely the best for spot colour artwork and rather good for most CMYK artwork. 

It's the best for spot colour artwork because the ink layer is a massive 70 µm thick. That's around as thick as a human hair. The thick ink is completely opaque for most colours and can be quite closely colour matched to other printed materials. By way of example - if you have a marketing kit with a folder, printed brochures, etc and they all are colour matched, we can colour match the disc to those items so that you present a quality, unified image that speaks of your class, quality and attention to detail.  

The negative aspect of this process is that tonal range is a little truncated.

In other words, you can't print a complete range of dot size from 1% to 100%. The effect on your artwork is that some shadow areas may appear too dark and some highlight areas may blow out to white.

To give you a realistic quality result, Red Circle Media has some proprietary techniques to compress the tonal range. To make your result look even better, you can assist by keeping your minimum density above 20% and maximum under 80%. The only exception is for vignettes - these should be kept within a 40% to 50% range between say 15% and 90% density. If you're not sure what this means, let us know and we'll help you. 

Brief summary? Good for just about everything but needs a professional hand to get the most out of it.

Thermal Photoprint

Excellent for short production runs with photographic images. Not so good for large areas of solid colour in quite a few cases. 

If your order is for some discs with some pictures and text in the artwork, then this method is great. The result has a nice mild gloss, isn't affected by water and looks rather good overall.

The bad side of it is that it's not economical for more than around 500 or 1000 units, depending on the rest of the project specification. The other fault we mentioned before is that large solid areas of print don't come up well sometimes. The reason for this is machine condition and operating conditions.

There are quite a few machines in Sydney which do this kind of print and many of them are well past their prime. The machines are bit fussy when it comes to maintenance and can become rather unreliable or at least unpredictable as they age. Some houses pass off some rather ordinary product at premium rates.

We can assure you that the machinery we use for thermal photoprint is pretty near darned new and run by some of the best operators in the region in a controlled environment area and you can expect some quite superior results. 

Inkjet

Known by many trade names around the industry.Many houses in the business call inkjet all kinds of fascinating marketing-oriented names. However, when it comes down to it, it's a water based ink being propelled onto a disc. We would rather not tell you that it's more than it really is. It's inkjet. 

However, there is inkjet and there is inkjet -  oils ain't oils and all that kind of thing.

Some methods that we've seen locally include a battery of retail printers equipped with bulk inkfeed units being manually loaded and unloaded by an operator. Obviously, a low-tech approach with questionable results.

There are some rather high-end machines that are intended for other non-disc purposes which have been adapted to CD and DVD printing - and yield quite superior results with very fine details resolved surprisingly well. Likewise, some platforms developed for moderate in-house production such as the Epson Disc Producer give awesome results that never fail to impress, using original Epson inks and the recommended discs.

Conversely, there are also some rather interesting and temperamental machines at a rather nearby company - they're completely open with no atmosphere or environmental control! Basically, wet ink and piles of discs are a giant dust magnet. I won't speak about the quality, but I will leave you to guess at it. 

The downside of the majority of inkjet print processes is that colour rendition is approximate. If you're sensitive about how colours are rendered, then this process is not for you. We will be announcing an extremely high-end inkjet process very soon which would meet your needs, but please don't expect it to be available before February. 

Our special offers for CD and DVD duplication refer to economy inkjet printing. Those offers are printed on a high-end industrial CD and DVD print machine and are of very good quality. If you choose to upgrade to a superior media, such as Taiyo Yuden Water Resistant series, then you will be able to expect a glossy, water resistant and smart-looking result. 

We have an additional method available which is less expensive than the Taiyo Yuden option, however, it is slower. The print is performed on a very new, high-end inkjet machine and then finished with a polymer glaze which is a low to medium gloss. If you have a little extra time, say a day or two and you're being conservative with your budget, then this process is optimal for you.

Obviously, we've been in the CD and DVD manufacturing and printing business for many years and have some demanding expectations about what good print really is. We even take a loupe (specialised printer's / imaging profession industry magnifier) to just about every disc we see - we're that serious and obsessed with quality. Our experience and desire for better results is your advantage: on time and on budget and looking great.

If you have any queries, you're most welcome to contact me direct: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . After all - I want your projects to be a simple success.