How to Create a Perfect CD Cover

I download a ton of concerts off the Internet. If you head to places such as etree’s bittorrent website, the Live Music Archive at Archive.org, or Dimeadozen.org, you’ll find literally thousands of live concerts, all freely available for download. And at etree.org and the Live Music Archive, care is taken to ensure that every single artist represented has been personally contacted to give their ‘okay’ to having concerts traded this way.

So, I end up with a lot of music on my hard drive. Most of this I just want to convert to something I can transfer to a portable music player, but other times I’ll find a concert that I want to keep. Sometimes it’s for me, other times I want give it to someone as a gift. In those instances, I don’t want to just slap the burned CDs into a cover and scribble the setlist on a piece of torn out notebook paper. I want these CDs to look and feel as close as possible to a “real” release.

You can sometimes find covert art for concerts on the Internet, but I’ve found that although nice, these covers aren’t always the quality I’m looking for. Sometimes they don’t have a high enough pixel resolution (meaning they print out looking kind of grainy), while other times I just don’t like how they look. So I often resort to making my own covers. In this article I’ll go over a few of the methods I use that ensure that the covers I use will have nice looking artwork and always fit into the case!

First is where to find artwork? I find that in almost all instances, Google is my best friend. Sometimes I’ll do a search for the band name, while other times I’ll search for the venue where the concert was performed. The official website of the band (or a fan-run website), is also a good option. Sometimes I’ll try to find pictures taken from the exact concert I’m looking for, or sometimes I’ll just look for something a bit more iconic, that doesn’t necessarily “represent” any single show.

Regardless, once I’ve found my artwork (and this applies whether I’m putting together a cover for a concert or for a compilation of songs I like), I now need to get them all fitted together, text added for setlists, and I need to make sure they’ll print out the right size.

So… what is the right size?

Well, if you’re doing a single-fold booklet for the front cover, you’ll want to use a graphics program such as Photoshop, The GIMP, or the new Pixelmator, to make an object that’s 9.5 inches wide by 4.75 inches tall. When folded over, you’ll have a perfect, 4.75 x 4.75 square cover. I usually use 300 dpi, which I finds prints much cleaner than regular monitor resolution of 72 dpi. Of course, this means you’ll need higher-resolution graphics, but trust me… it will look a whole lot better!

Once you’ve put together your front cover, you’ll want something for the tray. The tray is a bit trickier, for a couple of reasons. First is that you’ll likely need to make those two tiny little folds, for when the tray liner forms the spine of the CD case. Along with this, you’ll also need to rotate some text, so that the CD can be identified by the spine.

Not a huge deal. First, I always create an image that’s perfectly sized for JUST the back of the CD case. Not the spines… just the back. This should be 5.433 inches wide by 4.625 inches tall. Once you have that all finished, you’ll want to do a bit of resizing. You do NOT want to resize the image itself, but the canvas the image is on. You’ll need to add half an inch to the width, so that it totals 5.933 inches when you’re finished. Then, simply center the old image inside the new canvas, and you’ll see that the quarter-inch spines are now right where they should be. In Photoshop, all you need to do now is type up a line of text for the spine, select it, and then rotate it 90 degrees. Rotate 90 degrees right for the spine on the right and 90 degrees left for the spine on the left.

For printing, I try to use a slightly heavy, matte finish paper. Sure, you can buy glossy paper, but I find that the matte finish is a bit more durable, produces colors just as bright, and the glossy finish isn’t missed, since the cover will ultimately end up behind plastic anyway!

So… there you have it. All the dimensions you need to make CD covers the exact right size for all your custom CD needs. Enjoy!