Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker User Manual

Help Contents

Welcome
FAQ
Printing Troubleshooting FAQ
Getting Around in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker
Backgrounds
Layouts
Adding Your Own Images to Labels
Clip Art
Text
Colored Shapes
The Tracks Dialog
Printing
The Instant-Label Wizard
The Preferences Dialog

Purchase & Registration
About Acoustica
Support
Credits

Welcome

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Welcome to our help file. If you're looking for help with a particular problem, we suggest you
start at the Help Contents page. This section is more or less a philosophical overview of
Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker. If you're leaning forward in your chair right now, pupils
dilated, mouse in a deathgrip, all because of something you haven't been able to figure out
how to do - see the Help Contents. WelcomeIf you're reclining peacefully, with a comforting
beverage beside you and perhaps one hand thoughtfully stroking your chin - read on.

Our Goals

Acoustica's mission is to make fun, quality, easy to use software. We want Acoustica CD/DVD
Label Maker to be a program that never makes you want to swear at your computer or throw
your monitor out the window. We want to help you get your CD labels made quickly and enjoy
doing it. And we want to help you bring out your creative side, even if you don't think you have
one.

One of the first things we realized is that if you want to be able to get where you need to go
and try all the things you want to try, you need to have your tools handy. You don't want to
have to weed through menus and nested subdialogs and hieroglyphic-laden, randomly
arranged toolbars to get at the image or tool you're looking for. When you were four years old
and you set out to color a picture, you set your paper in front of you and dumped all your
crayons out beside it. Everything you needed was in easy reach. You didn't put all your red
crayons in one of the kitchen drawers, your blue crayons in a box in the attic, and your green
crayons under the bed at your friend's house across town. That would have been stupid. That
would have been the sort of thing that - and I blush to say so, because I belong to this category

- a programmer would do. We've tried to avoid the programmer's way and, instead, keep all
your tools just a click away so the program doesn't get in the way when you're in a creative
trance (you're in those all the time, right?). For more details on our approach to tools and
general program layout, see Getting Around in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker.

Our Process

"The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas."

--Linus Pauling
My fellow Acousticans loved it when I brought in a new version of the program with some

important new feature. They seemed to think it was one of those carnival booths where you
throw darts at the rows of balloons until you pop the one with the prize behind it. "I don't think
this is clear," one of them might say. (Pop!) "It's too hard to find this button," might say another.
(Pop!) "You need to be a techie to figure this out," a third might add. (Pop! Pop! Pop!)
Eventually, having reduced the program to rubble, we'd agree on what seemed to be the
clearest, simplest way to access whatever feature we were adding, and I'd head back to my
code editor. I soon figured that I could shorten this process by making us all argue over how to
add a feature before I wrote a version to try. This would be like having my Acousticohorts help
set up the booth, so that they knew beforehand which balloon hid the prize. Surely this would
reduce the carnage. But you know what? It didn't change a thing. The same people who swore
oaths over the best way to arrange the tabs in the print dialog would violently disagree as soon
as they saw it in action. Some things, it would seem, like program interfaces and living room
paint colors, just have to be tried out before you know what works.

And so, at least partly because of this, it's taken more than a year to bring this program to you.
Not that I'm complaining. The painstaking process we've gone through has helped us create a

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program that, I think, makes it easier, quicker, and more fun than it's ever been for you to
create labels you like. Without the feedback and ideas I received throughout the process, the
program would be nowhere near what it is today. So thanks, Joseph, Ronnie, Lois, Brian,
Donda, and the beta team. Please ask your nearest neighbor to pat you on the back.

So It's All Done Now?

Think back to all the bestselling novels you've written. Once they hit the bookshelves, you
were done with them. Perhaps you received fan mail that said, "I just adored your book. I'd
mow your lawn with tweezers if I could only have a tithe of your talent. And by the way, if
Kermit the Pirate had a peg leg in chapter three, shouldn't he have succumbed to the pack of
rabid unicycle beavers in chapter eleven?" And you'd think, "Hey, that's right!" But there was
nothing you could do about it now. It was out of your hands.

We don't have that problem. We can keep releasing new versions as long as enough of our
users register the software that we can afford to keep doing so. If one of our users - you, for
instance - find a bug or have a great idea, we can improve the program. As long as you tell us,
that is. If you notice a way to make the program simpler, or there's a feature you really, really,
really want, let us know. Your suggestion might find its way into the program. That sort of thing
doesn't happen in many places. No matter how many touching letters you write to William
Shakespeare, he won't change Romeo & Juliet to let the poor kids wake up in time and get
married after all. No matter how much you threaten Leonardo Da Vinci, he won't add a
moustache to the Mona Lisa. With us, you have a chance. We make no guarantees, but we do
listen to our users, and we like to hear from them. Without them, after all, we wouldn't be here.

Enjoy Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker; we hope it helps you find your inner cd label making
artist.

Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker programmer
Help Contents

Getting Around in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker

We've split the program's main window into two pieces: on the left, tools or ingredients; on the
right, your actual labels (or, if you like the ingredients metaphor, "stew"). It's set up this way
because it's hard to concentrate when the tools you need aren't handy. When we want to try
out a new background on a label, we don't want to launch a file-open dialog, search for the
right directory, select an image, and close the dialog. That's way too much work to repeat for
every single background we might want to look at. We want our backgrounds and clip art and
so forth available all the time, so we can try out new ones without having to organize a search

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party.

Consequently, there's a row of tabs along the top-left side of the program, labeled,
respectively, "layouts", "backgrounds", "art search", and "art browse". Clicking on one of the
tabs brings up one of the categories of stuff you can add to your label. Clicking on
"backgrounds," for instance, brings up a list of little thumbnailed images of all the built-in
backgrounds you can add to your currently selected label. Click on a background, and it
becomes your label's background. Click on another one (or use the arrow keys to select
another one), and now it becomes your label's new background. We think that's pretty
straightforward.

Hiding the Tools Window

Of course, you may be the type who can't abide distractions. "How can I concentrate on
perfecting the elements I've already chosen for my label," you may say, "if I've got all these
other backgrounds and clip arts tempting me?" I know I tend to be this way in chocolate shops.
So if you want the tools window to go away altogether, you can click on the left arrow button

Once you do this, the left arrow button will turn into a right arrow button; clicking on it will bring
the tools window back again.

Making the Tools Window Bigger or Smaller

Perhaps you want, like me, to have your tools window visible, but you find the cosmic balance
between the yin of tools and the yang of labels (or vice versa) is a little off, and you'd like a
little more or less of the tools window. This is easily solved. When you want your tools window
to be bigger or smaller, you can click on the border between the tools and labels windows and
drag it to size things however you want them. The mouse cursor will change into a little
horizontal resizing arrow whenever it's over the border.

The Label Tabs

at the bottom of the window. This will make the labels window take up the entire screen.

If you've ever wondered, "How do I edit all the different labels that a CD has?" or "What's that
row of tabs along the upper right hand side of the window for?", then you've come to the right
paragraph. The row of tabs above the labels window corresponds to the different label faces
you can design. Clicking on a tab will bring its respective label to the foreground so you can
play with it. Clicking on a label tab will also change the tools/ingredients windows to display the
available backgrounds and layouts for the new foreground label.

The "Display Tracks" Button

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We presume that your CD or DVD has something on it. Not many people make CD labels for
blank CDs - although if that's what you're doing, we certainly have no objections. And not
many people want to type in their tracks list once to display on their disc label, and once again
for the front of their jewel case, and once again for - well, you get the idea. We've created a
special Tracks lThe_Tracks_Windowist so that you can just type in your tracks list once (or let
the program import it for you, if you've got a playlist file), and then display it on whichever
labels you like. If you click the Show Tracks button, the program will display your tracks list on
the current label. If you click it again, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will hide your tracks
information. For more information, see the Displaying Text sDisplaying_Textection.

Help Contents

Text

Displaying Text
Text Properties Dialog
The "Edit Text" Window for Angled or Curved Text
The Tracks Dialog

Help Contents

Displaying Text

To display text on a label, create a text object. You can do this by clicking the "new text" button
on Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's main toolbar or by selecting the "Create a new text
object" item from the Text menu.

One of the biggest quandaries we faced when we were designing the text object control was
how to tell whether you clicked on the text control because you wanted to edit the text or
because you wanted to move the whole blooming object somewhere. It's a sticky issue. We
didn't want to make you go through a series of contortions to switch between object-moving
and text-editing modes. We wanted text editing and object moving and resizing to be available
at the same time. Here's how we dealt with it:

When you left-click on an unselected text object, it will select the object. The object will grow a
title bar, a frame, and a set of resizing bars. If you only wanted to move the object, don't
release the mouse button - you can drag the object anywhere you like until you release the
mouse button. Once you release the mouse button, the program will insert a text editing caret

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next to the text you clicked on.
Once a text object is selected (it's got the title bar and resize bars), clicking on the text will no

longer let you move the object; instead, it will place the text-editing caret next to the text you
clicked on. If you want to move the object once it's selected, you can do so by clicking on the
text object's title bar and dragging it around.

Clicking on a text object's title bar will not just let you move it; it will also cause the object to go
into "object mode." The editing caret will disappear, and any keystrokes you make will apply to
the object itself instead of the text inside it. If you press the Delete key while you're in object
mode, the entire text object will disappear. If you press Ctrl-x or Ctrl-c, the object will get cut or
copied, respectively. Pressing the arrow keys will move the object. Clicking anywhere inside
the text object will take you out of object mode and back into the normal text-editing mode.

Regardless of what mode a text object's in, once it's selected, you can resize it by clicking on
any of the little red resize bars scattered around its border and then dragging them.

The Text Object Toolbar

When you click on a text object, a toolbar should appear directly underneath it. If it doesn't,
click on the "T" button on the object's toolbar. The buttons on the toolbar serve these functions,
from left to right:

* Setting the typeface
* Setting the font size
* Setting the text color
* Toggling the
* Toggling the italics text effect on and off.
* Launching the text properties dialog,The_Text_Properties_Dialog which lets you edit a
veritable encyclopedia's worth of text properties.
* Editing the object's text (only shows up on the toolbars of text objects with text angles other
than 0 degrees).

Except for the last two buttons, which launch dialogs, all these buttons apply to whatever text
you've currently got selected. If you don't have any text selected, changes you make with
these buttons will apply to all the text in the text object. This is a different behavior from the
majority of text editing programs, which assume that if you don't have any text selected,
changes you make don't apply to any text at all - a behavior that, quite frankly, baffles us. If
you put a CD into the stereo and press the play button without selecting a particular track to
play, your CD player doesn't ignore you - it starts at the beginning and plays the whole CD. If
you walk into a bar and ask for a beer, the bartender won't pretend he didn't hear you just
because you didn't tell him how full you wanted the glass. And if you click the bold button
without any text selected, we're pretty sure you don't mean, "act as if I don't exist." You mean
to change text to bold. And that's what we do for you.

Special Stuff You Can Do With Tracks/Contents Text Objects

Track lists (lists of the track names, artist names, etc. on your CD) are a special type of text

text effect on and off.

bold

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object. You don't need to create new text objects to display them. Instead, either select a
layout that has a tracks list, or open the tracks dialog (by clicking the "tracks" button on the
toolbar) and check the "Display tracks on current label" button.

When you edit the text in a tracks list object, the changes will get relayed to all the other label
faces in your current file. So if you've got tracks list text objects on all your labels, editing the
disc label to change the title of song 1 from "Let the Good Times Ambulate" to "Let the Good
Times Roll" will cause the title to change on the front, inside, and back labels as well. Changes
you make to the text by editing it in the Tracks Dialog The_Tracks_Windowwill also get sent to
all the labels.

Formatting changes - fonts, italics, etc. - will not get sent to other labels. Only changes to the
actual text will get passed on to the other labels. In addition, changes to the track number field
won't get sent to the other labels. If you make a mistake and mess up one or more of the track
number fields, hiding and showing the tracks objects field (which you can do from the Tracks
Dialog) The_Tracks_Windowwill cause the tracks to get renumbered.

The Tracks List Header Bar

When you select a tracks text object, you should see, in addition to the traditional title bar,
sizing frame, resize bars, and toolbar, a columns header bar. The header bar has these
functions:

* Left-clicking on a header bar column will select all the text in that column, so that you can
apply whatever column-wide effects strike your fancy.

* Left-clicking on the border between columns and dragging it will allow you to resize columns
(in fixed-width columns mode) or the space between columns (if you're in variable-width
columns mode).

* Right-clicking on the header bar will pop up a menu that lets you hide and show individual
columns and toggle between fixed-width columns and variable-width columns modes.

Fixed Width vs. Variable Width Fields

In fixed-width mode, all rows of a field will be the same width. If you set the "track name" field
to be 2.5 centimeters wide, every track will have a 2.5-centimeter-wide track name. All rows
will line up exactly underneath each other, like the rows in a spreadsheet or a table in a word
processor.

In variable-width mode, each column of each row will be exactly as wide as required to display
the amount of text. The title for "You've Certainly Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" will be
wider than the title for "Louie Louie." The rows in the text object will not line up directly
underneath each other, unless all their text fields happen to be exactly the same length.

However, in variable-width columns mode, there will be a fixed amount of space between
columns. If you specify 1.2 centimeters after the track number column, every row will have 1.2
centimeters of blank space between its track number and the field that follows it, no matter
how wide individual track numbers may be. When you're in variable-width columns mode and
you drag the column borders in the header bar, you're actually editing the width between the
columns rather than the widths of the columns themselves.

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Fixed width columns work well for left-justified text or cases where you've got more than two
columns visible. The variable width columns setting can have a nice effect on centered or right-

ustified tracks listings.

If the header bar has a blank section before the first column, it's nothing to worry about. It just
means that you've got the text object in centered or right-justified mode.

The Text Properties Dialog
Help Contents

The "Edit Text" Window for Angled or Curved Text

When you set a text object to an angle (see the Text Properties Dialog "Text Angle" Page)
that'sText_Properties_Text_Angle_Page sideways or upside down, you won't be able to edit it
by just clicking on the text object, the way you normally do. While I was writing the program, I
tried editing text sideways and upside down, but I had a roaring headache within a minute. I
don't wish to cause pain to any of our users, so I added a right-side-up editing window to use
when your text isn't upright. When you set your text to be sideways, upside down, curved, or
spiral, the text object's toolbar will grow a new button, away off to the right side:

Click on the button and the program will launch a window like this one:

You can edit your text in this window. Any changes you make will show up back on your label
as soon as you close the window. (You can close the window by clicking on the X in the upper
right hand side of the window's title bar.)

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Help Contents

Clip Art

Art Search
Art Browse
Stuff You Can Do With Clip Art

Help Contents

Stuff You Can Do WIth Clip Art

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When you see a clip art image in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, you will be looking either at
a hopeful thumbnail under the Art Search or Art Browse tabs, or a proud, happy clip art image
that you have added to one of your labels. The actions you can take differ depending on which
of these two situations you're facing. We'll start with:

Stuff You Can Do with a Clip Art Thumbnail in the Art Search or Art Browse Tabs

* You can drag your mouse cursor over it and just let it sit there. This will cause a tooltip to pop
up and tell you the clip art image's name, folder location, size, and date and time when it was
last modified.

* You can left-click on it and drag it onto your label.
* You can double-click it. This will make it your label's background image.
* You can right-click it, which will pop up a menu with these options:

Set as Background

: this will bring up a submenu with these options:

1. Centered (overlap)

: make the selected clip art image your background image, and center it
on the label. This will cover the entire label with the selected image while preserving the
image's aspect ratio. If the image's aspect ratio differs from the label's aspect ratio, a portion of
the image will get clipped.

2. Centered (underlap)

: Like the centered overlap option, except that if the image and label
aspect ratios are different, the image will underlap the label instead of overlapping (cropping)
it. This means that if the image & label aspect ratios aren't the same, a portion of the label

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won't be covered by the background image.

3. Stretched

the entire label. This will make the selected image cover the label exactly, but it could change
the image's aspect ratio. If the image's aspect ratio is dramatically different from the label's
aspect ratio, this option could make the image appear stretched or scrunched.

4. Tiled:

tile it to cover the label.

dd to Labe

effect as clicking on a clip art thumbnail and dragging it onto a label.

Show Full Size

You can't edit the image or take any other useful actions with this window. It's just there so you
can take a closer look at it.

Set as Wallpaper

wallpaper. It has nothing to do with creating labels. It pops up a submenu with these four
options:

1. Tiled: Sets the clip art image as tiled wallpaper.

2. Centered: Sets the clip art image as centered wallpaper.

3. Stretched: Sets the clip art image as stretched wallpaper.

4. Stretched without Changing Aspect Ratio: Sets the clip art image as stretched wallpaper
without changing the image's aspect ratio. This means that the image won't get funhouse
mirrorified if it's not the same aspect ratio as your Windows desktop, but it may leave a blank
vertical or horizontal band on the desktop.

If you try to set as your Windows wallpaper an image of a type that Windows can't
automatically set as wallpaper, or it needs to be stretched in some way that Windows can't
handle automatically, the program will save the image in the correct size and format as a file
called wallpaper.bmp in your My Documents folder and tell Windows to set this new file as
your wallpaper.

Remove from list

delete or modify the actual clip art image's file in any way.

Rename file

programs that expect to find the image under its old file name.

Delete file:

Stuff You Can Do to a Clip Art Image That You've Added to a Label:

(We're assuming you didn't add your clip art image to a label as the label background. If that's
what you've done, check out Editing Background Images in the Backgrounds section instead.)

: make the selected clip art image your background image, and stretch it to cover

make the selected clip art image your background image, but instead of stretching it,

: add a copy of the clip art image to your label's foreground. This has the same

: pop up a window that displays the selected clip art image at its actual size.

: Lets you set the selected clip art image as your Windows desktop

: Removes the selected clip art image from the thumbnails list. It doesn't

: Lets you change the clip art image's file name. This will affect any other

Deletes the actual clip art image file. Use this option with caution!

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You can click on it

selected a clip art image, you can:

Move it.

and releasing the mouse button.

Resize it.

border, dragging to whatever size you want, and releasing the mouse button.

Click on one of its toolbar buttons:

toolbar will appear underneath it. (You can hide or show the toolbar by clicking the little "T"
button on the image's title bar.) The toolbar has buttons that let you move the image to the
front or back of all the other objects you've put on your label, or rotate it 90 degrees clockwise
or counterclockwise.

Right-click it
Bring to Front:
Send to Back:

the background image.

Rotate/Flip Image:

1. 90 degrees clockwise:

2. 90 degrees counterclockwise:

3. 180 degrees:

4. Flip Vertical:

5. Flip Horizontal:
Edit Image:

1. Convert to Black & White:

2. Invert (make a negative):

doesn't make sense to you, just try it).

3. Make Brighter:

4. Make Darker:

Reload:

Do this by left-clicking on the image or its title bar, dragging it to where you want it,

Do this by clicking on one of the red resize squares located around the image's

: This will pop up a menu with these options:

Pops up a submenu with these four options:

Reloads the image from its original file, discarding any edits you may have done to it.

. This will "select" it, so that you can move or resize it. Once you've

When you click on a clip art image and select it, a

Display the image on top of all other objects you've added to your label.

Display the image behind all other objects you've added to your label except

Pops up a submenu with these five options:

Rotate the image 90 degrees clockwise.

Rotate the image 90 degrees counterclockwise.

Rotate the image 180 degrees.

Flip the image vertically.

Flip the image horizontally (make a mirror image of it).

Technically, we should describe this as "convert to grayscale."

Reverse the color of every pixel in the background image (if this

Make the image a little bit brighter.

Make the image a little bit darker.

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Top-left pixel is transparent color:

If you've checked this option, Acoustica CD/DVD Label
Maker will treat the color in the image's top left pixel as the "transparent" color. Any pixels in
the image with this color will be transparent. Lots of clip art images are designed to be
displayed with a transparent background; this option lets you do so. Note: this setting usually
has little effect on JPEG files, because the JPEG compression algorithm will change
background pixels to colors that are similar to, but not quite the same as, the designated
transparent color.

Remove:

Removes the image from the label.

Cut Image:

back onto the label, or onto any other label, if you wish.

Removes the image from the label, but puts it on the clipboard, so you can paste it

Copy Image:

Copies the image to the clipboard without removing it from the label.

Maintain aspect ratio:

If you've checked this option, you can resize the image without getting
the dreaded funhouse mirror effect. If you uncheck it, you can streeeetch or scrunch the image
as much as you like.

Hide/Show Toolbar:

underneath the image whenever you select the image.

Hides or shows the little image toolbar that normally displays just

Any of these changes that you make to a clip art image will change the way Acoustica
CD/DVD Label Maker displays the image, but will not affect the clip art image's original file in
any way.

If you apply any of these changes to an image and decide you don't like them, you can click
the "Undo" button to retract them.

Help Contents

Adding Your Own Images to Labels

Finding Images to Add to a Label

Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker provides two ways to find images on your computer that you
can add to your labels:

1) Click on the "Art Search" tab, enter some text that's in the file or folder names of the art
you're looking for, and click the "Search" button. Thumbnails of all supported image files
matching your search terms will appear in the window underneath the search button. We
support jpg, bmp, png, and pcx graphics types.

2) Click on the "Art Browse" tab, and parse through the explorer tree to see thumbnails of all
the supported image files in a particular folder.

The "Art Search" and "Art Browse" tabs should be near the top left corner of your program

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window. They look like this:

If you're running at a low video resolution or you've resized your tools window to be very
narrow, the clip art tabs might not be visible:

In this case, you'll need to click the right arrow to scroll the clip art tabs into view before you
can select one of them and start adding your own clip art.

Using an Image You've Found as a Label Background

Once you've found an image you want to make your background, you can either:

1) Double-left-click on the image's thumbnail to make it the background
or

2) Ctrl + double-click the thumbnail to make it a tiled background
or

3) Right-click on the image's thumbnail and select one of the "Set as background" options.
Note that if the image you've selected doesn't have the same aspect ratio as the label you're

putting it on, it may appear stretched or squished. It that's the case, you can drag the image's
thumbnail and drop it onto the label, then click on the sizing bars to make it big enough to
overlap the label without altering its aspect ratio, and click on its title bar or the image itself to
position it where you want it.

Adding an Image You've Found as Clip Art

Once you've found an image you want to add to your label, just left-click on its thumbnail, drag
it onto your label, and release the mouse button. The program will place the image where you
dropped it. As soon as you drop it, it should be in "selected" mode, with sizing bars and a
toolbar. You can click on the image's sizing bars to resize the image; you can click on the
image's title bar or the image itself to move it. You can also right-click on the image to pop up a
menu with a variety of editing options.

You can also drag image files from Windows Explorer and drop them onto your label.
For more details on using your own images, see the Clip Art topic.
Help Contents

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Backgrounds

Click on the Backgrounds tab along the top-left side of Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's main
window, and you'll see thumbnails of all the pre-built background images that we ship with the
program. Click on any one of the thumbnails, and it will become your label's background
image.

If you want to edit your background image or, heaven forbid, remove it altogether, you'll need
to escort your mouse over to the label window and right-click on the background image, which
will popup a menu with various options for taking care of your background-editing needs. If
you're not a right-clicker, you can, alternatively, select the Background option on the main
menu.

Editing Background Images

Selecting the Edit Background Image option from the Background menu will bring up a list of
things you can do to your background image. Here's the lot:

90 degrees clockwise:

Rotate the background image 90 degrees clockwise.

90 degrees counterclockwise:

Rotate the background image 90 degrees counterclockwise.

180 degrees:

Rotate the background 180 degrees.

Flip vertical:

Flip the image vertically.

Flip horizontal:

Flip the image horizontally (make a mirror image of it).

Convert to black and white:

Technically, we should describe this as "convert to grayscale."

Invert (make a negative):

doesn't make sense to you, just try it).

Reverse the color of every pixel in the background image (if this

Make brighter:

Make the background image a little bit brighter.

Make darker:

Make the background image a little bit darker.

Reload:

in the above list that you may have performed.

Reload the background image in its original form, discarding any of the editing options

Of course, if you try any of these edits and you don't like them, you can always click on the
"Undo" button to get rid of them.

More Backgrounds

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We've got lots more background art than we could fit into our download file. Open the Help
menu and click on the Check for new art option, and we'll launch your browser with the URL of
our extra-art page.

Help Contents

Art Browse

If you want to use the traditional Windows-Explorer style interface for finding clip art on your
computer, click on the Art Browse tab near the top of the program's main window. This will
bring up our explorer-tree clip art window. Instead of a list of file names, though, our browse
tab displays thumbnails of all the images in whatever folder is currently selected. Call us crazy,
but we think it's easier to find the pictures you want by looking at the actual pictures than by
deciphering their file names.

The Art Browse tab pane contains two windows. The top window is a Windows Explorer tree.
Use it to find the folders where your clip art resides. Click on the + sign beside a folder or drive
you want to dive into, and the tree will expand to show the subdirectories that the folder or
drive contains. Click on the name of a folder or drive, and the Art Browse pane's lower window
will fill with the images that are in that folder (not including the images in any subdirectories it
may have), should it have any.

Changing the Explorer Tree & Thumbnail Window Sizes

You can change the amount of space devoted to the explorer tree window vs. the thumbnails
window by clicking on the border between them and dragging it up or down. The mouse cursor
will change into a little vertical resizing arrow when it's over the resizing border.

About the Clip Art Cache

Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker caches the thumbnails of any clip art images it finds. Or,
translated into English: the first time the program displays the thumbnail of a clip art image, it
will take longer to display than it will any time from then on. That's because the first time
through, it has to create the thumbnail that gets displayed. But it saves the thumbnail in a
special cache, so anytime the program displays that thumbnail from then on, it can retrieve the
thumbnail from the cache instead of creating it, so it will be much faster.

Note: the program bases the thumbnail size on your current video resolution, so that
thumbnails will occupy roughly the same amount of your available screen space no matter
what resolution you're running in. If you change your screen's resolution (such as from 800 by
600 to 1,024 by 768), the absolute thumbnail sizes will change, so the program will have to
create new thumbnails for any clip art that it displays.

Help Contents

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Art Search

If you want Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker to search for clip art images on your computer's
hard drive(s), click on the Art Search tab near the top of the program's main window. Then
follow these steps:

1) Type something to search for into the "Search for:" field. The search will find any file names
containing the text string you've entered here. If a directory name contains the string you've
typed in, the search will find any images in that directory and its subdirectories. If you leave the
"Search for:" field blank, the search will find all images in all directories.

2) Choose the image types that you want to search through, in the "File types:" combo box. If
you select "All", the search will find any image types that the program supports. Currently this
includes file extension types .bmp, .dib, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .pcx, .wmf, .gif, and .tif, plus various
flavors of Raw images.

3) Click the "Search" button. The button will change into a "Stop" button. Clicking on it again
will stop the search. Once the search has finished, it will revert back to a "Search" button.

Any images that the search finds will show up in the thumbnails list. The search will only find
files on your computer's fixed drives -- it will skip floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, Zip drives,
etc. If you need to search on a removable drive, you'll have to click on the Clip Art Browse
tabClip_Art_Explore and use our explorer control to find the clip art you're looking for.

Help Contents

Colored Shapes

In case clip art, background images, and text objects aren't enough to satisfy your creative
needs, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker offers a small assortment of colored shapes that you
can plaster all over your labels. Click on the "Shapes" button on the main toolbar, and a dialog
will pop up that will let you add them to your label. You can move and resize these shapes just
like any other objects: move them by clicking on their title bars or the shapes themselves and
then dragging them; resize them by clicking on and dragging any of the little red resize bars
scattered around the shape's borders. (These borders, I should add, are only visible when the
shape is in a "selected" state, meaning that you've clicked on it and haven't clicked on anything
else in the meantime.)

Once you click on a shape that you've added to a label, you should see a little shape-editing
toolbar appear beneath it. If there's no toolbar, click on the little "T" button in the shape's
titlebar. These buttons, taken from left to right, let you:

* change its shape
* change the shape's background color
* move the shape in front of all other objects on the label

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* move the shape behind everything else on the label (except the background image, if any)

One of our favorite ways to waste time with shape objects is to drag them around the screen a
little bit at a time, as if we were creating slow motion pong games or sunsets, and then play
them back like movies by holding down the Ctrl-Z (undo) key until everything comes to a stop,
then playing them back in the other direction by holding down the Ctrl-Y (redo) key. This
accomplishes absolutely nothing, and will not help you create CD labels. But you might enjoy
that sort of thing.

Help Contents

Layouts

The layouts feature is a way to take advantage of other people's creativity. We're not always in
the mood to lay out each of our labels, and decide where we want to put the tracks listing, and
how to arrange it, and whether we want a title on the label, or a dedication, or any number of
other things. We want the program to do it for us. So we added layouts to the program. If you
click on the Layouts tab (near the top left of Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's main window),
you'll see thumbnails of pre-built layouts you can try. Just click on one, and Acoustica will
rearrange your label to match the layout you've selected. A layout can include text fields
(including tracks arrangements), colored shapes, and/or images. If you don't like a layout
you've selected, you can either click on another layout, click the "Undo" button, or click on the
"roll your own" layout, which will remove all layout-specific elements from your current label.

Creating Your Own Layouts

Creative genius that you are, you probably won't have played with Acoustica CD/DVD Label
Maker for very long before you wind up inventing a label design of such majesty that you want
to save it to reuse on future labels. When this happens, open the File menu, click on

dvanced, and select the Save Current Label as Layout option. You can't miss it; it's currently

the only entry on the File | Advanced menu.

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Selecting this option will bring up a dialog that lets you save the current label as a layout. You
can save whichever elements you like: text fields, colored shapes, and/or images. You can
also specify which label types you want to be able to use this new layout with. Once you've
typed in a name for your new layout and clicked the OK button, your new layout will show up
under the Layouts tab along with all the pre-built layouts that we supplied with the program.
We hope your marvelous new layout won't mind slumming it with all our comparatively
pedestrian pre-supplied ones.

Help Contents

Printing

When you're ready to print your label, click the Print button on the main toolbar or select the
Print item from the File menu. This will launch the Print dialog, unless you're in trial mode and

you've used up your free trial. If that's the case, register Registrationand then come back.
The Print dialog consists of printer-specific information, at the top of the dialog, and label-

specific information, at the bottom of the dialog.

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The "Printer" Section:
Name:

to use.

Paper Bin:

chosen printer have multiple paper bins.

Print to File:

that your chosen printer can recognize, so that you can, in theory, print it later - although you
could always just run Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker again, instead.

Copies:
Properties:

the printer you've chosen. Since your printer manufacturer supplies this dialog, we can't predict
precisely what will be on it or give you detailed help with it.

Alignment:

you set printer offsets and label stretch amounts in case your printer, like most printers, doesn't
print at precisely the locations it's supposed to.

The Labels Section:
the row of tabs:

other options for particular labels and case inserts. If you've chosen to print a label, it will have
a little printer icon in its tab.

Gives you a list of all the printers attached to your computer. Choose the one you want

Lets you choose which bin you want the printer to grab paper from, should your

If checked, printing won't go to the printer; instead, it will go to a file in a format

Lets you choose how many copies of each label you want to print.

Launches a dialog that lets you set options - print quality, for instance -- specific to

Launches the Printer Alignment Dialog,The_Printer_Alignment_Dialog which lets

Clicking on these lets you bring up a tab for choosing paper type and sundry

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Paper Type:

different paper type from this list, the thumbnail underneath the Click on labels to use heading
will display the layout of the paper you've chosen.

Print a border around label:

around the label. This can be handy if you're printing on plain paper and your background has
lots of white in it.

Print fold lines:

help you fold your labels. You don't need to check this box unless you're printing on plain
paper; most stock paper forms have folds built into the paper. If you check this box for the

ewel case back, the label maker will print lines indicating where to fold the two spines. If you
check this box for the jewel case front/inside, the label maker will print a line indicating where
to fold the front/inside booklet in half. (The box will be disabled for the front/inside label if
you're not printing on a paper type that prints both the front and inside labels on the same side
of the paper.) This checkbox will always be disabled for CD and DVD labels, or for any other
labels that don't have fold lines.

You can set a variety of options for fold lines in
thePreferences_Dialog_Printing_Fold_Lines_Page Preferences Dialog. You can decide
whether you want your fold lines to be solid or dashed lines, whether you want them to be
inside or outside the label, and what color you want them to be.

Crop Label Holes:

hole areas of your CDs. This can save ink, but also runs the risk of showing white bands on
your label if your printer alignment is significantly off. However, if you've got non-zero label
stretch settings (the software defaults to 2.0 millimeters) to stretch your label diameter to help
compensate for alignment issues, your hole will also get stretched -- or rather, unstretched. If
your label hole is 41 millimeters in diameter, your stretch setting is 2.0 millimeters, and you've
got Crop Label Holes checked, your printed label will have a 39-millimeter diameter hole.

If you're printing to a printable disc, Crop Label Holes will be automatically disabled and
checked -- for printable discs, you have to crop out the hole, or you'll end up with ink all over
the non-printable hole area of your disc. For the same reason, stretch settings are ignored for
printable discs.

If you're printing a label that doesn't have a hole -- a CD jewel case insert, for instance -- the
Crop Label Holes checkbox won't be visible.

Click on labels to use:

type you're printing, you can click on the the labels on the thumbnail to choose which of the
paper's labels you want to print on.

Sheets required:

on how many copies you're printing and how many of your selected paper type's labels you've
chosen to use.

That arrow pointing to the left:

image you should feed into the printer first.

Print Disc / Print Front/Inside / Print Back:

Lets you choose the type of paper you want to print on. Whenever you choose a

If you check this box, the program will print a thin black border

If you check this box, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will print fold lines to

If you check this box, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker won't print in the

If you've chosen a paper type that can print more than one label of the

Tells you how many sheets you'll need of the paper you've selected, based

Indicates which edge of the paper displayed in the thumbnail

These checkboxes let you choose which labels

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you want to print. If you check the box for a label, it will print. If not, it won't.
Once you've selected what you want to print and what you want to print it on, click the Print

button to proceed. The next thing you see will be:

The Insert-Paper Dialog:

This dialog will prompt you to insert one or more sheets of the paper types you've chosen for
the labels you've chosen to print. The buttons on the dialog will behave as follows:

Print:
Cancel:
Skip:

print the label(s)

cancel the entire printing operation.

don't print this label; if you've selected more than one label to print, the dialog will

advance to the next label.

launch this help page.

Help:

If you're printing more than one of your labels, the dialog will appear multiple times. If you're
printing, say, a CD disc and a jewel case back, the dialog will appear twice, once to prompt
you to insert your CD disc label paper, and again to tell you to insert the jewel case back
paper.

If you're printing the jewel case front/inside on a paper type that has a single face instead of a
book arrangement, you'll get prompted to insert the paper for it, and then you'll be asked to
reinsert the paper upside-down so the program can print the jewel case inside on the back of
the paper. Make sure the fronts have finished printing and you've reinserted the labels before
you click the "Print" button on the "reinsert upside-down" dialog.

Printing for the First Time:

If you're printing with a new type of label stock for the first time, we recommend that you feed
plain paper into the printer instead, even though the insert-paper dialog has told you to insert
sheets of your label stock. This way you can check your printer's alignment before using up
any of your relatively expensive label stock. Once it's printed on plain paper, you should be
able to see if it's aligned correctly by putting a sheet of your label stock on top of your freshly
printed sheet of plain paper, making sure they line up exactly on top of each other, and then

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holding the two sheets in front of a light so that the printed label on the plain paper underneath
is visible. This should help prevent you from wasting custom paper stock tracking down your
printer's alignment problems.

If you haven't run the Printer Calibration Wizard yet, try it as well. It prints an alignment test
sheet that can help you determine whether or not your printer has enough calibration error to
require alignment adjustments. You can launch the Printer Calibration Wizard from the File
menu.

For more information on setting your printer's alignment, see theThe_Printer_Alignment_Dialog
Printer Alignment dialog.

Help Contents

The Printer Alignment Dialog

Printers are imprecise beasts. You can tell them to print something exactly 1.2 inches from the
top of the paper, but chances are, it'll end up being more like 1.1 or 1.28 inches from the top.
The older your printer gets, the more likely this is to occur, as all the little mechanical bits that
escort paper into and out of the printer get worn out. You're not likely to notice this flaw when
you're printing, say, a resumé. And if your interviewer is measuring the margins on your
resumé, you may be happier elsewhere anyway. But when you're printing CD labels on a pre­cut form, every millimeter matters. (That's why millimeters would rather be on a CD label than
a plain sheet of paper - they like to feel important.) If your printer is a millimeter awry on a CD
label, you'll get a millimeter of white, unprinted space on your label. It won't look good.

If your printer is consistently wrong, which is often the case, you can use the Printer Offsets
section of this dialog to correct it. If the printer always prints a millimeter to the right of where

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it's supposed to, you can use this section to tell the program to always print labels one
millimeter to the left of where they'd normally go, which will cancel out the printer's imprecision
and make things print just where they ought to be.

Before you make any adjustments via this dialog, we'd like to make two important
recommendations:

Recommendation #1: Run the Printer Calibration Wizard first!

calibration test sheet to help you determine what settings you need in this dialog -- and in fact,
you can enter them there instead, and you may never actually have to launch this dialog at all.
You can get to the Printer Calibration Wizard from the "File" menu.

Recommendation #2: If you've launched this dialog to fix the alignment for printing

rintable discs, stop

error a printer has for printing paper from a paper tray and for printing on a CD that's fed into
the printer via a CD tray is almost never the same, so applying the same alignment
adjustments to both is likely to cause problems.

You can set alignment settings exclusively for your CD tray at the Edit Paper/Printer Templates
dialog, and, thanks to the "Don't apply to printable discs" checkbox on this dialog, you can
make alignment settings exclusively for paper on this dialog, and they'll never interfere with
each other. You can also, of course, make alignment adjustments for particular paper types
from the Edit Paper/Printer Templates dialog (keep in mind that changes made there will apply
to any printer you print that paper in, whereas changes in this dialog only apply to a particular
printer.) You can launch the Edit Paper/Printer Templates dialog from the "File" menu.

"Printer Offsets" controls:
Move labels by:

alignment. Enter the amount of space, in millimeters, by which you need to move labels
horizontally and vertically, respectively, for the printer you've chosen.

To the left/To the right:

horizontal printing errors. If your printer always prints stuff too far to the right, check the "To the
left" box. If it always prints too far to the left, check the "To the right" box.

Up/Down:

If your printer always prints stuff too far down the page, check the "Up" box. If if prints too high,
check the "Down" box.

Don't apply to printable discs

here will be ignored when you're printing on printable discs. We recommend checking this
option. The printer alignment error that occurs when printing on paper from a paper tray is
highly unlikely to be identical to any printer alignment error that occurs when you're printing on
a CD tray inserted into the printer, so using the same settings for both is likely to create as
many problems as it solves. We recommend using the alignment settings on this dialog to
account for paper-related alignment errors, and using the Edit Paper/Printer Templates dialog
(which you can launch from the File menu) to account for any printable-disc alignment error.

Lets you select the direction in which to correct your printer's vertical printing errors.

Go to the Edit Paper/Printer Templates dialog instead. The alignment

There's one of these sections each for horizontal and vertical paper

Lets you select the direction in which to correct your printer's

: If this box is checked, the printer-alignment settings you make

This wizard will print a

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The "Stretch Labels" section:

If your printer doesn't align correctly, but isn't consistent about it, you can correct it by using the
brute force method of stretching all the labels by a millimeter or two, which will result in the
label being slightly larger in every direction. So even if your printer prints too high one pass,
and too low the next, or likes to feint left and print right, you'll be set.

We generally recommend setting the stretch labels amount at one to two millimeters. We also
recommend that you don't put important stuff, such as text, within a millimeter or so of your
label borders or the CD hole unless you have a fabulously reliable printer, because otherwise it
stands a good chance of getting chopped off when you print it.

But don't stretch plain-paper labels:

This checkbox lets you specify whether or not you want
to apply your stretch settings to labels you print on plain paper. By default, this box will be
checked, which is our recommendation. The stretch labels settings are designed to overcome
problems with your printer's alignment so that you can fit labels onto premade forms. But since
plain paper doesn't have any pre-perforated labels that you need to line your labels up with,
stretching isn't necessary, and in fact will only make your labels bigger than they need to be.

Printing
Help Contents

The Insert-Paper Dialog

This dialog will prompt you to insert one or more sheets of the paper types you've chosen for
the labels you've chosen to print. The buttons on the dialog will behave as follows:

Print:
Cancel:
Skip:

print the label(s)

cancel the entire printing operation.

don't print this label; if you've selected more than one label to print, the dialog will

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advance to the next label.

launch this help page.

Help:

If you're printing more than one of your labels, the dialog will appear multiple times. If you're
printing, say, a CD label and a CD jewel case back insert, the dialog will appear twice, once to
prompt you to insert your CD label paper, and again to tell you to insert the jewel case back
paper.

If you're printing the jewel case front/inside on a paper type that has a single face instead of a
book arrangement, you'll get prompted to insert the paper for it, and then you'll be asked to
reinsert the paper upside-down so that Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker can print the jewel
case inside on the back of the paper. Make sure the fronts have finished printing and you've
reinserted the labels before you click the "Print" button on the "reinsert upside-down" dialog.

Printing for the First Time:

If you're printing with a new type of label stock for the first time, we recommend that you feed
plain paper into the printer instead, even though the insert-paper dialog has told you to insert
sheets of your label stock. This way you can check your printer's alignment before using up
any of your relatively expensive label stock. Once it's printed on plain paper, you should be
able to see if it's aligned correctly by putting a sheet of your label stock on top of your freshly
printed sheet of plain paper, making sure they line up exactly on top of each other, and then
holding the two sheets in front of a light so that the printed label on the plain paper underneath
is visible. This should help prevent you from wasting custom paper stock tracking down your
printer's alignment problems. For more information on setting your printer's alignment, see the
Printer Alignment dialog.

Printing
Help Contents

The "Edit Paper/Printer Templates" Dialog

This dialog allows you to edit the
sizes and positions of individual
labels on sheets of label paper
(or on the templates for direct-to­CD printers). There are a couple
common circumstances when you
might want to do this:

* when you're printing directly
onto a printable CD or DVD and
your discs don't have a standard

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printable diameter or hole
diameter (118 millimeters and 41 millimeters, respectively, for CDs and DVDs), you can use
this dialog to set the diameters to match the printable discs you're using.

* when your printer doesn't feed a particular label efficiently, and as a result, the farther down
or across the page you go, the less well aligned your labels are. Label sheets that are folded in
half to fit in the box you buy them in are particularly prone to this problem. When this occurs,
you can use this dialog to resize or reposition the particular labels that don't line up correctly in
your printer.

Why would I use this dialog instead of the Alignment dialog (the one you can launch
from the Print dialog or the Preferences dialog)?

The regular Alignment dialog makes changes that only apply to a particular printer, but to all
labels on all paper types (except plain paper and printable CDs) that you print with that printer.
So it works best if your printer has an alignment problem that always manifests itself in the
same way no matter what kind of paper you're using. This dialog, on the other hand, lets you
make changes that apply to all the printers you've got, but only to particular labels on particular
paper types. It's best for changing the diameters of printable CDs and DVDs to match the
media you're using, and for quirky alignment problems that only occur with particular types of
paper.

The Top Half of the "Edit Paper Templates" Dialog:

The top half of the "Edit Paper Templates" dialog contains controls for choosing the label you
want to edit.The listbox under the "Template Name:" heading lists all the paper types & direct­to-CD printer templates installed in the software. Scroll through and click on the paper type you
want to edit, and a thumbnail of the paper's layout will appear on the right side of the dialog.
The currently selected label on your selected paper type will be highlighted in green on this
thumbnail; to edit a different label, just click on its image in the thumbnail.

The "Front of Sheet" checkbox will usually be disabled. However, if you're editing a paper type
that has different labels on the front and back of the sheet, this box will be enabled and you
can click on it to toggle between views of the front and back of your selected label paper. If
you've got a label such as a jewel case insert that prints on both the front and back of the
sheet, you won't be able to select it on the back-of-the-sheet view; if you need to edit it, you'll
have to edit it from the front-of-sheet view.

The Bottom Half of the "Edit Paper Templates" Dialog:

The

"Adjustments for Selected Label"

position of the label you've selected. Here's a summary of the controls on this part of the
dialog:

Move by (left/right):

accurately, to make the label maker behave as if the label has moved. Units are in millimeters.
The label's position on the thumbnail in the top half of the dialog will update as you change the
amounts, so if you're confused about what left and right mean in this context, just play with the
control, and you'll soon see.

section is where you can change the size and

This allows you to move a label to the left or right on the page -- or more

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