Silkscreen and offset printing are the terms you will definitely encounter when you need to do a CD replication project. What is the difference?

The differences are the methods and the results. If you have done T-Shirt printing you probably know what silkscreen printing is. Essentially it uses a piece of screen with small holes for the ink to get through.  Offset printing uses a roller (or plate) to transfer the color over to the object to be printed.

From your perspective, the only thing you should care is whether the graphic is vector or bitmaps. Vector graphics are created using programs such as Illustrator and CorelDraw. Bitmap graphics are created most likely by Photoshop or the equivalents.

What happens when one uses the wrong printing method? For example, using silkscreen for bitmap artwork and offset for vector artwork?

If silkscreen printing is used on photographic artwork the most obvious result is that the pictures will be pixelated.  Depending on the density of the screen lines, a high-density screen can produce relatively acceptable and less obvious pixelated results. But when the line density is low, the printed CD face can be as coarse as a piece of sandpaper.

On the other hand, if offset printing is used on a vector artwork with a large solid area, the result is that the solid area will not be as solid as it should be.  Color washout is commonly seen when offset printing is used to print vector artwork.

For silkscreen printing, you will normally provide PMS number for the colors used on the artwork.  PMS stands for Pantone Matching Systems and is the language for talking about colors.  When a color is specified by a PMS number, you should expect the color will be exactly the same color on a Pantone color chart. Color matching for offset printing is a bit more difficult. But when color is a big concern for you, it is always a good idea to make a printout to your CD replicator and the most knowledgeable printer should be able to color match close to the printout you provide; 100% matching is almost impossible though.

Compact discs have been around for over 30 years.  Remember when the first CD burner came out on the market?  The drive itself cost over $2,000 and one blank CD-R was sold at over $5 per piece.  With the market economy and the economy of scale at work, now a high-speed CD burner costs less than $20 and a blank CD-R is at the 10 cents level.  Using CDs for digital content distribution has been a day of life.  Many software companies still prefer to use CDs to download for security reasons.  Musicians also use CDs for their music and music fans also want physical CDs as collection items.  Trade show goers use CDs to replace the good old paper brochures.  In a nutshell, the application of compact discs for digital content distribution is still all the rage.

When it comes to making copies of CDs there are two ways of doing that; i.e. one can duplicate and one can replicate.  To the laymen, these two terms seem to refer to the same thing. But in the disc copying industry, there is a subtle difference.  Duplication actually refers to CD-R burning. This is a flexible way to make CD copies. The problem is that duplicated discs have that amateurish look because the CD face is either labeled with paper or printed with inkjet.  Professional discs, on the other hand, are done by replication.  A replicated CD is pressed from an injection molding machine from molten polycarbonate. All retail CDs on retail shelves are replicated.

In the United States, there are over a few hundred CD replicators scattered all over the country.  Choosing a good CD replicator is crucial to your CD release. Compared with the money you have spent CD replication is probably the smallest slice of the pie.  It is the last stage of your production and not doing it right is also the last thing you want to see.  As in any purchasing decision, quality and pricing are the two major factors.  But if you are the first-timer for CD replication, how do you know which company will give you the best quality at the most competitive pricing?

Isn’t it true that every CD replication company claims it has the best quality and the best price? In this competitive market, we have seen only unselfish companies can survive.  Greedy companies not posting their prices on their website normally disappear from the market in one or two years.  As far as quality, the easiest way is to request samples from your prospective vendors.  Voir c’est croire.  When you put the samples side by side it will not be difficult to spot the right vendor.

Last but not least, you should always ask whether a vendor does porn DVD replication. Avoid those vendors who do is a must whether you think that is moral or not.  No matter how good quality control the vendors may claim, there is still the chance for a porn DVD to get mixed into your order.  If you think about a gospel music CD that ends up being a porn DVD, you can see how serious that is.  But believe it or not, we have seen it and heard it happen in some porn replicators.

When it comes to using black color as background or the color of text, most designers will intuitively set the K value of CMYK to 100% with all the other three colors set to 0%.  While this K=100% only color does seem to be black on computer screens, it is actually a dark gray color when it is printed.

To set a true black color the CMYK values should be C=50%, M=40%, Y=40%, and K=100%.  With this setting, you can expect a very solid dark charcoal black as the black hole at the far end of the universe.

Care about how a CD is made from raw material?  One of our summer interns wrote an article a few years ago about CD Manufacturing.  It’s pretty informative about CD or DVD replication in plain simple language.

The summary of the article is given below.

As the major media for music distribution for over 30 years, the compact disc is about to reach the end of its product life cycle. But if you are a music lover and CD collector, you may still be interested in knowing how compact discs are made. In this paper, the author will try to explain the whole process of how a compact disc is fabricated, from the raw material to the finished product.