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:

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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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Move by (up/down):

are in millimeters.

Diameter (mm):

label maker will automatically center your size changes against the original center of the CD. Which might sound a bit confusing, but just means that if you change your disc diameter from, say, 118 millimeters to 110 millimeters to fit the type of printable CD you've got, you don't need to also change the left/right and up/down settings to keep your resized disc from getting printed off center. It's taken care of already. If this still isn't clear, just try playing with the diameter setting, and you'll notice that the label's thumbnail in the top half of the dialog stays centered in the same spot.

Hole Diameter (mm):

CD. The label maker will automatically center the hole on the disc, no matter what disc or hole diameters you've set.

Width (mm):

you adjust the diameter instead). Units are in millimeters.

Height (mm):

discs, you adjust the diameter instead). Units are in millimeters.

Reset:

button and the current label will get reset to its original, unaltered settings. Not that you would ever need this. This is strictly for our other, less gifted users.

Print a Ruler:

would ever know? There could be a Yeti under that mountain of stuff, happily using the ruler for a backscratcher, and it wouldn't surprise you. For people like you (and us), we present the Print a Ruler button. Click it to print a brand new ruler that you can use for all the fine-grained calculations that this dialog allows.

OK:

OK button.

Cancel:

could alter the nature of space & time and unleash gophers from another dimension onto our unsuspecting planet? Just click the Cancel button, and it'll all go away like a bad dream.

Help:

When you save changes you've made in this dialog, the label maker saves them in text files under your "My Documents" folder. In particular, your "My Documents" folder should have an "Acoustica" subfolder, and the "Acoustica" subfolder should have a "paper align" subfolder. Here you'll find your adjustments, saved in text files with a .paj extension and a file name matching the paper type you were editing. If you're running the label maker on multiple computers and you want to copy your alignment adjustments from this dialog to another computer, just copy these files and place them in the same folder on the other computer.

If you mess up your settings so badly that you just want to start over, click the Reset

Happy with the changes you've made in this dialog? Want to keep them? Then click the

Having second thoughts? Did you open this dialog and do things that you're afraid

Something tells us you've already figured out what this button does.

Allows you to change the width of a label (for non-CD/DVD labels only; for discs,

Allows you to change the height of a label (for non-CD/DVD labels only; for

If your desk resembles ours, you might have a ruler on it someplace, but who

This allows you to move a label up or down on the page. Units, again,

This allows you to edit a CD, DVD, or mini-CD's diameter, in millimeters. The

This allows you to edit the center-hole diameter of a CD, DVD, or mini-

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Help Contents

Printing Troubleshooting

Printable Disc Issues

When I try to print a printable disc on my Canon printer, I get an error message that the tray door is open.

I've got a Canon printer, but the CD tray doesn't show up among the paper-bin options. When I print printable CDs or DVDs on my Epson printer, the discs come out with banding or

other quality problems, yet they look fine when printing with the software that came with the printer.

When I print directly to CD, the ink doesn't stick - it bubbles up and wipes off easily.

Paper & Miscellaneous Issues

How do I get my printer aligned without using up lots of valuable label paper? How do I choose the paper type I want to print on? When I print labels, they don't line up exactly where they're supposed to. My alignment's all over the place from one printout to the next

The software doesn't support the make or brand of label paper I own. Some of my labels print without graphics or other elements of my design. When I print my labels, they're way too small or way too large, or parts of them are chopped

off. How can I print borders around my labels or print fold lines for them? How do I print more than one copy of a label at a time? The software tells me my paper is too small and part of my label will get chopped off. The software always prints the top label on my label sheet. How do I tell it to print on the

bottom label? How do I print all 3 labels on a 3-up CD label sheet?

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Why do some of the paper names say "US" and some say "A4"? And why do some say "Legal"? Can I get arrested for printing on contraband paper?

All my labels get printed in black & white, even though I've got a color printer. When I print, the print quality is poor or I get odd colors. When I try to print, I get a message that the printer is offline or unavailable.

How do I get my printer aligned without using up lots of valuable label paper?

Start by running the Printer Calibration Wizard, which you can access from the "File" menu. It prints a calibration test sheet that helps you determine how much alignment adjustment your printer needs.

nother trick we like to use is to set the paper type to your normal label paper, but then insert a sheet of plain paper in the printer instead when you print. Once your label has printed on plain paper, paper-clip it to a sheet of your label paper (put the printed plain sheet behind the label sheet) and hold it up to a light. The label printed on plain paper will usually be visible behind the sheet of label paper, so you can see how closely the printed label matches up to the outlines of the labels on your label sheet. Make sure you've matched up the edges of the two sheets evenly when you do this, of course.

If you determine that you need to adjust your printer's alignment, do so from the Alignment dialog, which you can launch by clicking the "Alignment" button on the Print dialog.

How do I choose the paper type I want to print on?

At the bottom of the label window (the area in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker where you design your label), you'll find a combo box that lists all the available paper types and printabledisc printers. Choose your paper type from the list that pops up when you click the down-arrow button on the combo box. You can change your paper or printer choice at any time; once you've designed a label, you're not locked into using the paper type you chose at the start of the project.

You can also change your paper type from the Print dialog. Please note that when you change your paper type via the combo box at the bottom of the label window, the label maker will automatically update the layout to reflect any changes (such as bigger or smaller label holes) and reformat text objects if necessary. This automatic reformatting won't take place when you select a new paper type from the Print dialog, though, until after you've exited the dialog.

When I print labels, they don't line up exactly where they're supposed to.

* Make sure your paper fits snugly in your printer's paper tray. If it has room to slide around, it's likely to line up incorrectly when it goes through the printer.

* Make sure you've selected the correct paper type. Some companies (Neato, for instance),

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make a large variety of papers for different kinds of labels and in both letter and A4 sizes, and if you've inadvertently selected the wrong model, the labels won't line up correctly when they print.

* Run the Printer Calibration Wizard (accessible from the "File" menu), which can help you determine whether or not you need to make adjustments to account for your printer's alignment error.

* Check to see whether you've selected any printer settings that will affect your printed label sizes or positions. To do this, click the "Properties" button on the Print dialog. The printerproperties dialog that pops up was designed by your printer manufacturer and will differ depending on what kind of printer you have, so we can't tell you exactly what to look for. But if you have settings such as "shrink to fit page", disable them, and if you have scale settings, make sure they're at 100%. If you've got a setting for fitting multiple pages of output onto a single sheet, make sure it's set to the normal setting, which will usually be 1 page per sheet.

My alignment's all over the place from one printout to the next.

Make sure your paper fits snugly in your printer's paper tray. If it has room to slide around, it's likely to feed through the printer inconsistently from one print job to the next.

If that's not the culprit, it could be that your printer just doesn't align consistently. Try running the Printer Calibration Wizard and printing multiple copies of the alignment test sheet to see if your printer's alignment error is inconsistent. If so, your best bet is to use the "stretch" settings in the Printer Alignment dialog (accessible by clicking the "Alignment" button on the Print dialog) to make your printouts larger than normal to try and compensate for the alignment error.

The software doesn't support the make or brand of label paper I own.

We make every effort to support all the brands of label paper that our customers use. If you've got one we don't support, there's a good chance we just haven't heard of it yet or we can't track down samples of it where we're located. If you send us a sheet or two, we can usually create a template for it.

Some of my labels print without graphics or other elements of my design.

This is often a sign of a shortage of memory or hard drive space. Inkjet printers use your computer's memory and hard drive space to compose pages before they print them. If there's a shortage of either, it could cause your printer to behave in peculiar ways. Try closing unnecessary applications and freeing up hard drive space if you've got unnecessary files hanging about. If you've got a laser printer, which composes each page in its internal memory before printing, the printer itself may need extra memory.

If you try reducing the print quality (by clicking the "Properties" button on the Print dialog) and the problem goes away, the culprit is almost certainly a shortage of memory (either on your computer or laser printer) or disk space.

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When I print my labels, they're way too small or way too large, or parts of them are chopped off.

Huge discrepancies in label size are usually due to printer-properties issues. Check to see whether you've selected any printer settings that will affect your printed label sizes or positions. To do this, click the "Properties" button on the Print dialog. The printer-properties dialog that pops up was designed by your printer manufacturer and will differ depending on what kind of printer you have, so we can't tell you exactly what to look for. But if you have settings such as "shrink to fit page", disable them, and if you have scale settings, make sure they're at 100%.

If parts of your labels are chopped off, it's often a result of a shortage of memory or hard drive space. See the previous question for more details. If parts of your label near the edge of the sheet are chopped off, they could be overlapping your printer's unprintable margins. You'll usually receive a warning message if this is the case.

How can I print borders around my labels or print fold lines for them?

On the Print dialog, check the box labeled "Print a border around label" to print a border around your label, and check the box labeled "Print fold lines" to print fold lines. This box will be disabled for labels that don't actually have any foldable bits.

You can adjust the appearance of your fold lines from the "Printing fold lines" page of the "Preferences" dialog (accessible from the "File" menu), including line color, whether to print solid or dashed lines, and whether to print the lines inside or outside the label.

How do I print more than one copy of a label at a time?

Set the number of copies you want to print in the "Copies" control near the top of the Print dialog.

The software tells me my paper is too small and part of my label will get chopped off.

Many printers have unprintable margins -- they can't print all the way to the edge of a sheet. If your label overlaps your printer's unprintable areas, this warning message will appear. If you're printing on plain paper, switching to a larger paper size, such as a legal sheet, will usually fix this. If your printer is really capable of edge-to-edge printing, you may need to adjust printer settings to tell the printer to actually print edge to edge; usually you can do this from your printer properties dialog or by choosing the appropriate paper bin setting.

The software always prints the top label on my label sheet. How do I tell it to print on the bottom label?

On the Print dialog, you'll see a thumbnail representing your label paper. The label that's currently selected to be printed will be displayed on the sheet. If you want to print on a different label on the sheet, just click on it, and it will get selected instead. Note that the arrow beside the thumbnail represents the direction in which you'll feed the paper into the printer, so the

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edge of the paper thumbnail next to the arrow will usually be the top of the sheet.

How do I print all 3 labels on a 3-up CD label sheet?

You'll have to send the paper through the printer twice. Because the bounding rectangle of the center label overlaps the bounding rectangles of the top and bottom labels on all the 3-up sheets we've seen, it can't be printed at the same time as the top or bottom labels, or they'll have sections of them whited out.

Why do some of the paper names say "US" and some say "A4"? And why do some say "Legal"? Can I get arrested for printing on contraband paper?

These names represent paper sizes. "US" paper is standard letter paper, 8.5 x 11 inches; "Legal" paper is 8.5 x 14 inches, and "A4" paper is 210 x 297 millimeters. We promise not to tell anyone if you're not printing on Legal paper.

All my labels get printed in black & white, even though I've got a color printer.

It's possible that your color ink cartridge is empty. More likely, though, is that you've got a "print in black & white" setting somewhere in your printer properties dialog, and somehow, someway, it's gotten set. Click the "Properties" button on the Print dialog to launch your printer's properties dialog so you can hunt this down and fix it.

When I print, the print quality is poor or I get odd colors.

Make sure that your printer doesn't have any empty ink cartridges. If color documents printed with other software exhibit the same problem, an empty ink cartridge is probably the culprit.

If not, click the "Properties" button on the Print dialog to launch your printer's properties dialog and check to see if you've checked any settings that will negatively affect print quality -- the print quality setting itself would be a good starting point, although your printer may also have settings to use custom color subsitutions or other schemes that could hurt print quality. If you've got other software that prints correctly, try launching the printer properties dialog in those apps and comparing them to see what settings are different.

When I try to print, I get a message that the printer is offline or unavailable.

This means that your printer is not correctly hooked to your computer or is in a state in which it can't print. Check these items:

* Have you selected the right printer in the label maker's Print dialog? It may sound obvious, but it's worth checking to be sure.

* If you've selected the right printer, is the power on and is it hooked up to your computer? Is there a paper jam, paper outage, or other condition that would cause it to refuse to print? (If the printer is in an unhappy state, there's often an error light blinking on it somewhere.) Check that the cable attaching the printer to your computer is securely attached, and try turning the

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printer off and on again.

Printable CD/DVD Issues When I try to print a printable disc on my Canon printer, I get an error message that the

tray door is open.

The label maker attempts to automatically set the paper bin and media type on your Canon printer to prevent this error from occurring. However, there may be something unusual about your Canon model that prevents this from working. If that's the case, here's how to handle the error manually:

1) Bring up the File menu and launch the Preferences dialog, then go to the Miscellaneous page of the dialog and check the "Don't auto-set paper bin or media type" box. Click the OK button on the Preferences dialog to save your changes.

2) Click the Properties button on the Print dialog to launch your Canon's printer-properties dialog, then set the media type to one of the "Printable Disc" options.

3) Once you've clicked "OK" to close the printer-properties dialog, the paper bin on the label maker's Print dialog should be set to the CD-tray option. If it's not, set it to the CD-tray option now.

This should stop the error from occurring. Remember that you'll need to change the media type and paper bin settings back again if you want to print on paper labels or inserts instead of printable discs.

I've got a Canon printer, but the CD tray doesn't show up among the paper-bin options.

The CD tray won't show up among the paper-bin options for a Canon printer until you click on the "Properties" button in the Print dialog to launch Canon's printer properties dialog, and then change the media type to one of the printable-disc choices.

If you bought your Canon printer in the US, though, it probably doesn't support printable-disc printing at all, and the CD tray option won't actually exist. We've been told that patent issues prevent Canon from selling CD-printing versions of their printers in the US, but we haven't seen official confirmation of this.

When I print printable CDs or DVDs on my Epson printer, the discs come out with banding or other quality problems, yet they look fine when printing with the software that came with the printer.

This problem is caused by having non-optimal printer-properties settings. Click the "Properties" button on the Print dialog in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker to launch the Epson's printerproperties dialog, then check these settings:

1) the print quality setting -- if it's set to less than the highest value, your discs may print with inferior resolution or color quality.

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2) the media type -- if it's set to be any of the paper choices instead of being one of the CD/DVD settings, your printed CD may have banding problems.

If fixing these two items don't solve the problem, launch the printer-properties dialog in both Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker and the Epson-bundled software. If there are any differences, adjust Acoustica's settings to match the settings in the Epson software.

When I print directly to CD, the ink doesn't stick - it bubbles up and wipes off easily.

You can't print directly onto a normal CD; you need to buy printable CDs, which are labeled as such and usually have a white surface.

You'll also need to know that there are two kinds of printable discs: thermal and inkjet. Make sure you're using the right type for your printer. The vast majority of direct-to-disc printers (and printable discs) are inkjet, so that's probably what you've got. If you try to print on a thermal printable disc in your inkjet printer, the ink won't stick to it; it'll just make a little puddle on your disc. If you try to print on an inkjet disc in a thermal printer, we're not sure what will happen; we haven't tried this yet. It's not likely to be good, though.

If you print outside the printable areas on a printable disc, you'll find that ink will wipe off these areas easily. If this happens, make sure you've got the non-sticky ink wiped off before you insert the CD or DVD into a drive to play it. You might find that after buying a new batch of printable CDs, you're suddenly getting printouts that leave parts of the printable area on the disc unprinted or print onto unprintable areas of the disc. This occurs because different brands and models of printable discs have slightly different printable diameters. To fix this, launch the Edit Paper/Printer Templates dialog (accessible from the "File" menu) to adjust your disc & hole diameter settings to match the printable discs you've got. If you don't have a metric ruler handy (the settings on this dialog are all in millimeters, which are much easier than inches to work with when you're dealing with very small distances), the dialog can print one for you.

Help Contents

The Your-Label's-Too-Darn-Big Dialog

If you're printing a label on plain paper and it's so big that it overlaps your printer's unprintable area or even the edges of the paper itself, you'll get to spend some time with this dialog.

You can't print your label full size in all its glory, but Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will help you make the best of things. Here are your options:

Scale the entire label down to fit:

This will make the entire label smaller so that it will fit on your paper. If you've got a DVD case label that's 10 millimeters too wide, this option will shrink the entire label to make it 10 millimeters narrower. The advantage is that everything you put on your label will still print, if at a slightly smaller size. The disadvantages are that the label will get

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shrunk both horizontally and vertically, even though the paper was too small in only one of those directions, and because the label is getting rescaled, any fold lines that get printed might be slightly off. This option is probably the best available, though.

Chop some millimeters off each side:

If your label is 10 millimeters too wide, the program will chop 5 millimeters off each side. This is good because your label will still be symmetrical, and it will only get chopped in one direction (i.e., horizontal or vertical, but not both). But it's bad because it chops off some of the label you worked so hard to create. It's a good option if you don't have any interesting content near your label edges.

Ignore the overlap:

You can always pretend the overlap doesn't exist. If your label is 10 millimeters too wide and you choose this option, the rightmost 10 millimeters will get chopped off. We don't think this is your best choice, but you may have your reasons. We won't pry.

If you check the "Always print this way; don't ask me again" box before clicking the "OK" button, the program will use your choice to handle printer overlap from now on without asking you, so you'll never see this dialog box again.

click this button when you've made your choice and you're ready to move on.

OK: Cancel:

click this button if you've decided you don't want to print this label after all.

we suspect you've already got some experience with this button. But if you enjoy this

Help:

help page, feel free to click it whenever you want.

What else?

If you've got more than one printer, try 'em all. You might find that another of your printers has a small enough unprintable margin that the entire label will print on it without being shrunk. Or if you're sure your printer is capable of edge-to-edge printing, you made need to set an option in its printer-properties dialog (accessible from the Print dialog) or select a specific printer bin to print from in order to get your printer to actually print edge to edge.

Printing Help Contents

The Instant-Label Wizard

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If you're in a CD-label-making race, or you don't trust your label design skills, or you just can't be bothered to plunge in up to your elbows among the muck of backgrounds and text and clip art, then Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's instant-label wizard is for you. We've done all we can to remove as many choices as possible, so that all you have to do is make a few mouse clicks and proceed to the printing. We couldn't remove all the choices, owing to the difficulty of licensing mind-reading technology, but the ones that remain aren't too hard. Those of us at Acoustica who've had some experience with the wizard have been known to get through it in under ten seconds.

Every page of the wizard contains a series of buttons that let you navigate through the wizard. They are:

< Back

: go to the previous page

Next >:

go to the next page

Cancel:

exit the wizard, discarding everything you've done in it

launch this help page or a related one. The evidence would indicate that you already

Help:

know about this one.

Finish:

made.

only shows up on the last page. Closes the wizard and retains all the choices you've

These links provide more detail on the various stages of the wizard: Choose a Label Type Choose a Theme Tracks Additional Text Fields

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Finish You can launch the wizard by choosing the Instant-Label Wizard option from the File menu. If

you want the wizard to launch every time you run the Label Maker program, you can specify as much from the Auto-Run Page of the Preferences Dialog.

Help Contents

Instant-Label Wizard "Choose Label Type" Page

Choose whether you want to make your labels for a CD, a DVD, or a mini CD. A CD label set includes a CDDVD label plus the inserts for a standard jewel case. A DVD label set includes a CD/DVD label plus the inserts for a DVD case. A mini CD label set includes a mini-CD/DVD label plus an insert for a mini-CD jewel case.

Once you've chosen your label type, click tne Next button to go to the Choose a Theme page. The Instant-Label Wizard Help Contents

Instant-Label Wizard "Choose Theme" Page

Just by clicking on a theme in this list, you'll choose the background image, text fields, fonts, tracks format, and general all-around layout of all the labels for your CD or DVD. We think that, for efficiency and far-reaching power, this mouse click ranks right up there with the "selfdestruct this entire vast underground complex" buttons that the villains are always pressing in James Bond movies.

Each of the themes in the list on this page displays three pictures representing approximately what your labels will look like if you choose that particular theme. If you're creating a CD project, the first picture, starting from the left, will be your disc label; the second will be your

ewel case front booklet; and the third will be your jewel case back. Once you've chosen your theme, click the Next button to go to the Tracks page. The Instant-Label Wizard Help Contents

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Instant-Label Wizard "Tracks" Page

If you've gotten this far, you're rapidly getting the hang of this "wizard" business. This page lets you type in your tracks listing - either your song list, for an audio CD, or your chapter list, for a DVD. If you're running the audio CD wizard, you can also import your tracks from a playlist, if you have one, which will save you all that tedious typing.

To type in the contents for a field in the contents list - i.e., "Song Title", "Artist", "Chapter", etc. click on the field and just start typing. Once the contents list has the keyboard focus, you can also move from field to field by using the arrow keys or the tab key. There are several other ways to get a field into edit mode. Here's the lot:

press the Enter key: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text press F2: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text click the Edit button: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text double-click the text field: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text

ust start typing: replaces the contents of the field with whatever you're typing You can't edit the contents of the "number" field. We couldn't see the value of identifying song

3 as "7" or "12" or "bx", but if you think you can convince us otherwise, send us an e-mail. If you want to change a track's position in the list, you can click the "Move Up" or "Move Down" buttons or just click on the song and drag it up or down.

This page has several buttons along the right side of the window:

Add Row:

adds a new row to the end of the list.

Remove:

remove the currently selected row.

lets you edit the text of the currently selected item.

Edit: Move Up:

moves the currently selected row one row up.

Move Down:

moves the currently selected row one row down.

Import:

this button will only be visible if you're working on an audio CD label. It lets you import tracks from a playlist file. When you burn a CD, you usually create a playlist file that lists the songs you burned to the CD. Acoustica CD Label Maker can read most types of playlist files, including the .cbs files generated by our own Acoustica MP3 CD Burner, and automatically create a song list for you.

Read CD:

this button will be visible if you're working on an audio or data CD or DVD label and you have a CD/DVD drive attached to your computer. It will attempt to get tracks information from the CD or DVD in your drive. For audio CDs, if your CD has an entry in cdplayer.ini or cdburner.ini, the program will use it; if not, it will try to look up a tracks listing for your CD over the Internet. For data CDs and DVDs, it will just read all the files and folders off the disc.

iTunes:

If you've got iTunes installed on your computer, click this button and the label maker

will attempt to find your iTunes library and read in all your playlists, so you can import an

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iTunes playlist to Acoustica without having to export it from iTunes first.

Data Type:

This control lets you choose what kind of data you're displaying for your project. If you choose the Audio CD/DVD option, you'll get a standard audio playlist with song titles, artists, song lengths, etc. If you choose the Data CD/DVD option, you'll get a playlist for a Data CD, with file and folder names, file sizes, etc. If you choose the Video option, you'll get a playlist for a video disc, with chapter titles and lengths.

Show Files & Folders, etc.:

This combo box, only available if you've chosen the Data

CD/DVD data type, lets you choose whether you want to display file names, folder names, or

both.

This button, only available if you've chosen the Data CD/DVD data type, launches the Data Layout Details dialog to let you set a variety of display options for the files and folders on your data CD playlist.

Once you've got all your tracks info just the way you want it, click the Next button to go to the Additional Text Fields page.

The Instant-Label Wizard Help Contents

Instant-Label Wizard "Additional Text Fields" Page

Depending on which theme you chose in the Choose a Theme page, your CD o r DV D label set may display text for titles, dedications, artist names, etc. This page lets you type in the text you want for each of these fields.

One you're satisfied with all your text fields, click the Next button to advance to the last page of the wizard.

The Instant-Label Wizard Help Contents

Instant-Label Wizard "Finish" Page

Once you get to this page, your wizard is done. All you need to decide is whether you want to keep it or not.

If you like what you've done, click the Finish button. This will close the wizard and keep all the label décor you picked out in the wizard.

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If you're having second thoughts, click the Cancel button. This will close the wizard and discard all the wizard decisions you're apparently starting to regret.

The Instant-Label Wizard Help Contents

The Tracks Dialog

This dialog lets you type in and edit your tracks listing - your song list, for an audio CD or DVD; your file list, for a data CD/DVD; or your chapter list, for a video CD/DVD. If you're editing an audio CD, you can import your tracks from a playlist and save yourself all that tedious typing. You can also import files from audio and data CDs or DVDs.

To type in the contents for a field in the contents list - "Song Title", "Artist", "Chapter", etc. click on the field and start typing. Once the contents list has the keyboard focus, you can also move from field to field by using the arrow keys or the tab key. There are several other ways to get a field into edit mode. Here's the lot:

press the Enter key: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text

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play

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press F2: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text click the Edit button: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text double-click the text field: selects the text in the field and puts the caret at the end of the text

ust start typing: replaces the existing contents of the field with whatever you're typing

If the contents of a field are too wide to fit in the available space in the tracks list, you'll see a row of periods, like so: … at the end of the field. If you drag the mouse cursor over the field and let it sit there, a tooltip will pop up that displays the unabbreviated contents of the field.

You can adjust the widths of the different columns in the tracks list by clicking on the borders between the columns and dragging them. This doesn't affect how wide the columns will be on any actual labels. You can also double-click on a column header's right boundary to automatically widen it to fit the widest text in the column.

Like many another dialog, this one has a bunch of buttons. Here's what they all mean:

Add Row Remove: Edit Move Up Move Down Import:

tracks from a playlist file. When you burn a CD, you usually create a playlist file that lists the songs you burned to the CD. Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker can read most types of playlist files, including the .cbs files generated by our own Acoustica MP3 CD Burner, and automatically create a song list for you.

Read CD:

you have a CD/DVD drive attached to your computer. It will attempt to get tracks information from the CD or DVD in your drive. For audio CDs, if your CD has an entry in cdplayer.ini or cdburner.ini, the program will use it; if not, it will try to look up a tracks listing for your CD over the Internet. For data CDs and DVDs, it will just read all the files and folders off the disc.

iTunes:

CD/DVD Label Maker will attempt to find your iTunes library and read in all your playlists, so you can import an iTunes playlist to the label maker without having to export it from iTunes first.

Formatting:

Label" option. It launches the Tracks Formatting Dialog,Tracks_Formatting_Dialog which lets you play with the display attributes of your tracks listing, including layout, fonts, colors, field display order, and which tracks fields should be visible and which should be hidden.

Done: Dis

: adds a new row to the end of the list.

removes the currently selected row.

: lets you edit the text of the currently selected item.

: moves the currently selected row one row up.

: moves the currently selected row one row down.

this button will only be visible if you're working on an audio CD label. It lets you import

this button will be visible if you're working on an audio or data CD or DVD label and

If you've got iTunes installed on your computer, click this button and the Acoustica

This button will only be enabled if you checked the "Display Tracks on Current

closes the window.

tracks on current label:

If you check this box, your tracks will be displayed on

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whichever label you've got currently visible. If you uncheck it, they'll be hidden.

Data Type:

Show Files & Folders, etc.:

This combo box, only available if you've chosen the Data

CD/DVD data type, lets you choose whether you want to display file names, folder names, or

both.

Details:

Help Contents

Tracks Formatting Dialog

The Tracks Formatting dialog lets you quickly set the formatting, including visibility, font, color, and layout, for your various tracks fields. It also lets you save your favorite combinations as presets that you can access later with just a click or two. Changes you make in this dialog apply only to the current foreground label, so you can edit the formatting of your disc label without affecting the jewel case inserts, etc.

You can launch this dialog by clicking the "Formatting" button on Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's Tracks Dialog.

Here's what all the controls on this dialog do:

Presets:

This combo box contains all the system presets (the ones that ship with the software) and user presets (presets you saved yourself) for quick access. Selecting a preset will cause the software to format your tracks text with all the font properties (and optionally, the layout information from the "Arrangement" combo box) stored in that preset.

To create presets of your own, click the "save" button. It's directly adjacent to the Presets combo box and has a little picture of a disk on it. This will launch a file-save dialog in which you can choose a name for your preset and decide whether you want your preset to store just font information or both font and layout information. (If you choose to save layout information, the preset will save the layout information from the "Arrangement" option you currently have selected.)

Changed your mind about a preset you've created? To delete it, select it, then click on the Delete button. This one is next to the Save button & has a picture of a pair of scissors on it. (It will be disabled unless you've selected a user-created preset.) Before deleting your preset, the

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software will prompt you so it can make sure you didn't click the Delete button by accident.

rrangement:

contains the same options as the auto-format combo box that appears on the tracks object's toolbar after you select it.) Selecting an option from the Arrangement combo box will cause the software to format the layout of your tracks text to match the option you've selected.

Fields:

and text color for a particular field, select it in this list box, and the dialog will update itself to display the current font/color/visiblity settings for that field.

You can use the up and down buttons next to the Fields list box to change the order in which fields display. If you want the Artist field to display before the Song Title field, for instance, select the Artist field, then click the Up button.

Field is Visible: Font:

display.

Size:

display.

Bold:

normal weighting.

Italic:

non-italicized display.

Underline:

field.

Text Color:

selected field gets drawn. The text color button displays the current text color. Click on it to change the color.

The which-tracks combo box lets you set the text color for all tracks or just for odd- or evennumbered tracks. If you select the "even-numbered tracks" option and then click on the text color button, for instance, the text color you choose will apply only to the current field in evennumbered tracks.

If you've chosen different colors for odd- and even-numbered tracks and you select the "All Tracks" option, the text color button will display the odd-tracks color on the left side of the button and the even-tracks color on the right side. (Selecting a color when the "All Tracks" option is chosen will set the color for both odd- and even-numbered tracks.)

Using different colors for odd- and even-numbered tracks can make the tracks listing easier to read when it contains a large number of tracks. Make sure that both colors show up well against your chosen background art, though.

The Tracks Dialog

This list box contains a list of all your tracks fields. To edit the font formatting, visiblity,

The font/typeface combo box lists the font in which the currently selected field will

Use this combo box to change the font size in which the currently selected field will

Check or uncheck this box to make the currently selected field display with either bold or

Check or uncheck this box to toggle the currently selected field between italicized and

This combo box contains a list of quick-layout options for the current label. (It

Check or uncheck this box to hide or show the currently selected field.

Check or uncheck this box to turn underlining on and off for the currently selected

This pair of controls lets you control the color in which the text for the currently

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Help Contents

The iTunes Dialog

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The iTunes dialog searches your iTunes library and produces a list of all your iTunes playlists. Click on a playlist name in the Playlists listbox to see what's in that playlist. Once you've found the playlist you want, click the OK button, and Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will import the playlist you've chosen into your Tracks listing so you can display it on your labels.

Replace Existing Tracks: if you check this option and then click OK to import an iTunes playlist, the playlist you've chosen will replace any tracks you already had in your tracks listing. If you uncheck this option, importing an iTunes playlist from this dialog will cause it to get appended to your current tracks listing.

The Tracks Dialog Help Contents

Playlist Search Dialog

If you've got a playlist file that you want to import song names from, but you can't remember where the file is, then this dialog is for you. It will automatically search your hard drive and

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display a list of all the files it finds that appear to be playlists. You can just scroll through, click on the one you want, and click "OK", and the label maker will automatically import that playlist for you.

Here's what all the buttons on this dialog mean:

close the dialog and import tracks from the playlist file you've selected

OK: Cancel:

close the dialog without importing any tracks

Given your presence here, we suspect you already know what this button does.

Help: Stop:

button will become disabled.

tells the program to stop searching for playlist files. Once the search is complete, this

Replace Existing Files:

If you check this box before importing a playlist file from this dialog, the tracks that get imported from that playlist will replace any existing track information. If this box isn't checked, tracks you import here will get appended to the end of your existing track information.

If you're searching for an iTunes playlist, keep in mind that this dialog will only find playlists that you've exported from iTunes with the iTunes export feature. In this case, you'll find it faster and easier to click the iTunes button on the Tracks dialog instead, since the iTunes playlist dialog will read all your iTunes playlists instead of just the ones you've exported.

The Tracks Dialog Help Contents

Choose a CD Drive

This dialog pops up when Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker wants to know which of your many CD drives holds the CD that you're trying to read track information from. Your job is to tell it. Just click on the drive letter of the drive that holds your CD and then, once it's selected, click the "OK" button. If you're energy-conscious and you're trying to conserve mouse mileage, you can double-click on the drive letter instead.

If you don't remember which drive holds the CD (but you're sure one of them does), you won't do any terrible damage by picking the wrong drive. The program will either import tracks for the wrong CD or display an error message indicating that there's no CD in the drive you picked. In either case, you can just click the "Import" button on the Tracks dialog again to rerun the process and select the right drive this time.

Help Contents

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"Choose a Disc ID" Dialog

If FreeDB finds multiple potential matches for your CD, they'll all be displayed in this dialog. Choose the one that looks right to you. If it turns out to be wrong, click the "Import" button on the Tracks Dialog again and repeat the process and choose another one.

When FreeDB finds multiple matches, they're usually multiple copies of nearly identical playlists, with slight variations in obscure fields that Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker doesn't really care about. As long as the artist and album names are correct, you probably won't go wrong.

Help Contents

Data Layout Details

This dialog, launched by clicking the Details button on Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's Tracks dialog, lets you set various display properties for the contents of data CDs and DVDs you've imported. (The Details button will only be visible if you've selected a Data-CD-type data set from the Tracks dialog.)

In most cases, the changes you make here will only affect the current label you have selected for editing. If you've launched this dialog from the instant-label wizard, however, your changes will apply to all the labels in the current label set you're creating in the wizard. (If you want to edit per-label properties within a project you're creating from the wizard, you can finish the wizard, then select the label you want to change and bring up the Tracks dialog and click the More button.)

What to Display:

include file names, folder names, or both.

Nesting Levels:

subfolders of the CD or DVD you've imported. If the level is 1, your label will only display file and folder names from the root level of the disc you've imported. If you set it to 2, it will include the root level plus the immediate contents of any subfolders at the root level. If you set it to 3, it will include the contents of the root level's subfolder's subfolders. And so on.

File Date Format: Folder Name Decoration:

they're distinguishable from file names. If you select the "<Folder Name>" option, folder names will have greater than/less than symbols around them. If you select the "[Folder Name]" option, folder names will have square brackets around them. And if you select the "Names Only" option, folder names will have no special formatting, and will have the same appearance as file names.

Dialog

This combo box lets you choose whether you want your tracks display to

This control lets you decide whether you want to display the contents of

This control lets you decide how you want file dates to display.

This control allows you to add special formatting to folder names so

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Disc Summary:

If you check this option, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will create a new text field that lists information about the contents of the disc you've imported. Please note that the disc summary can only retrieve information from a disc-import operation (by clicking the "Read CD" button on the Tracks dialog). If you enter new file, folder or file size information by hand, or edit the file information on the Tracks dialog, the disc summary will ignore it.

The Disc Summary option will be disabled if you've launched this dialog from the instant-label wizard. If you'd like to add disc summaries to particular labels, you can finish the wizard, then launch the Tracks dialog and click on the More button to launch this dialog again.

Format:

This control lets you select what information you want displayed in the disc summary. You can choose to display the total number of files and folders on the disc you've imported, the total size of all the files on the disc, and/or the range of dates (oldest and newest) of the files on the disc.

Help Contents

The Preferences Dialog

This dialog collects a bunch of Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker program settings that generally don't nicely fit into other categories and lets you edit them. You can launch the Preferences dialog by selecting the Preferences option from the File menu.

The dialog contains several pages. Select which page you want to view and edit by clicking on the page names in the listbox on the left side of the dialog.

Main Toolbar Auto-Run Options Printer Alignment

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Stretch Labels Printing Fold Lines Miscellaneous

Help Contents

Preferences Dialog "Auto-Run Options" Page

This page lets you decide whether or not to launch the new-label wizard The_Wizardevery time you start Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, and whether or not the program should automatically change the text justification when you switch a text object to a round background.

The Always run the new-label wizard at program startup checkbox:

If you check the "Always run the new-label wizard at program startup" box, the wizard will automatically run whenever you start the label maker. If you uncheck the box, the wizard will never run unless you explicitly tell it to by choosing the Instant-Label Wizard option from the File menu.

Of course, there's an exception. If you launch the Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker by doubleclicking on a label file in WIndows Explorer or by dragging a label file onto the Label Maker's program icon, the wizard won't run at startup even if you have the always-run checkbox checked. Our logic was that the wizard is used for creating a brand-new label, and if you're launching the program by double-clicking a label file, you don't want a new label, you want to edit the one you just double-clicked. We hope we have not erred in this assumption.

The Remember last-used project type at program startup checkbox:

By default, the software creates a blank CD project when it starts. If you check this box, it will remember the project type (CD, DVD, or mini-CD) you were working on the last time you used

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the software and create a blank project of that type when you start the program. So if you were working on a DVD project the last time you ran the software, the next time it launches it will create a blank DVD project for you to work on.

The Inquire about safety margins with printable discs checkbox:

When you're printing directly onto a printable disc, the label maker will pop up a dialog asking whether or not you'd like to print with an extra one-millimeter safety margin around the label and hole boundaries. This is handy while you're working out your printer's alignment, but once you've got things locked in, you'll probably want to skip the safety margin and stop getting asked about it. If you check the "don't ask again" box on the safety-margin dialog, the label maker won't ask you on future print jobs whether or not you want to print with the extra margin; it'll just assume you don't. Unchecking the "Inquire about safety margins with printable discs" checkbox here serves the same purpose as checking the "don't ask again" box on the safetymargins dialog.

The When changing a text object's shape to round buttons:

Lots of people think that if you display text within a round shape, the text will look goofy unless it's centered. Others say that non-centered text within a round shape can add dash and spice to an ordinary design, and can rouse people to rethink their placid assumptions about the natural order of things, much like Stravinsky's Rites of Spring or the shower scene in Psycho. For our part, we've tried to remain agnostic about this. To accommodate all sides of this raging debate, we've added this set of buttons:

lways center the text: when you change a text object to have a round shape, the program will

automatically convert the text to centered justification. Never center the text: when you change a text object to have a round shape, we'll just pretend

it never happened, at least from a text justification point of view.

lways ask me: when you change a text object to have a round shape, we'll ask you whether

or not you want us to center the text for you.

The Preferences Dialog Help Contents

Preferences Dialog "Main Toolbar" Page

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This page lets you choose how you want Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's main toolbar (which runs across the top of the program's main window) to look.

These are your options:

Big icons with text:

the button does.

each toolbar button will have a 32 by 32 icon, plus text describing what

Big icons, no text:

each toolbar button will have just the 32 by 32 icon.

Small icons with text:

the button does.

each toolbar button will have a 16 by 16 icon, plus text describing what

Small icons, no text:

each toolbar button will have just the 16 by 16 icon.

No toolbar:

artist.

the toolbar will not be visible at all. If you use this setting, please don't tell our

The Preferences Dialog Help Contents

Preferences Dialog "Printer Alignment" Page

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However, if your printer is consistently wrong, which is often the case, you can use this dialog to correct it. If the printer always prints a millimeter to the right of where it's supposed to, you can use this dialog 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.

Here's a summary of the controls on this page:

When printing on:

Lets you select the printer for which you want to set offsets.

Move labels by

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

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

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

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

here will be ignored when you're printing on printable discs. We recommend checking this

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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.

If your printer doesn't align correctly, but isn't consistent about it, you can correct it by telling Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker to stretch labels when it prints them. You can set the stretch amount on the Stretch Labels Preferences_Dialog_Stretch_Labels_Pagepage.

The Preferences Dialog Help Contents

Preferences Dialog "Stretch Labels" Page

This dialog lets you account for printer alignment errors by telling Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker to stretch all your labels when it prints them. If your printer doesn't print precisely where it's supposed to, but it's always off in exactly the same way, you can use the printer alignment dialog Preferences_Dialog_Printer_Alignment_Pageto fix it. If it's not wrong consistently enough, however, you'll need to use 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.

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

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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.

The Preferences Dialog Help Contents

Preferences Dialog "Printing Fold Lines" Page

This page lets you set options for printing fold lines on your labels. You can turn fold line printing on and off from the Print DialogPrinting. If you turn them on, the program will print lines on your labels to help you fold them correctly. You don't need to check this box unless you're printing on plain paper; most stock paper forms have folds already built into the paper. If you check this box for the jewel case back, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will print lines indicating where to fold the two spines. If you check this box for the jewel case front/inside, th e 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.) You won't be able to check this box for the CD disc label, because there's nothing to fold on a CD or DVD label.

The Fold Line Options:

Solid Lines:

If you check this radio button, the program will print solid fold lines.

Dashed Lines

: If you you check this radio button, the program will print dashed fold lines.

Print lines outside the label only:

your labels to indicate where you need to fold them. If you check this box, the program

If you don't check this box, the program will print fold lines

won't print fold lines on your labels; it will print short lines just outside your label boundaries to indicate where you should fold your labels. If you use this option, there won't be lines on your

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label, but you'll have to eyeball things a bit to get your fold lines right.

Color

: This option lets you choose what color you want your fold lines to be. The colored rectangle to the right of the "color" text will display your currently chosen fold line color. You can click on this rectangle or the "Change Color" button to choose a new color.

The Preferences Dialog Help Contents

Preferences Dialog "Miscellaneous" Page

This page lets you set a variety of options that don't fit neatly into any of the other preferences categories.

Embed images in saved files:

If this box is checked, whenever you save a project, all the images you used in the project will get saved inside the project file itself. Checking this box will be a big help if you plan to copy a project to another computer, or if you're planning to delete, move, or rename any of the image files you used when you were designing the labels in your project. However, since it embeds a full copy of each image in your saved project file, those files will be much larger as a result.

If you're pressed for hard-drive space, uncheck this option, and then instead of storing the image file itself in your project files, it will just store the path and file name of the images, and load them separately each time you subsequently open your project. Your project files will be much smaller, but you'll need to make sure you haven't moved, renamed, or deleted any of the image files you used, or the label maker won't be able to find them when you try to reopen the project.

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You can override the setting you've made here for any project. When you bring up the "Save As" dialog, there will be an "Embed images inside file" checkbox on the dialog so you can turn image embedding on or off for particular projects. The checkbox may be checked and disabled if you've saved the project previously with embed-images enabled (in which case the label maker may no longer know where to find the original image files) or if you've pasted images from the clipboard onto a label in your project (since clipboard images exist only in memory and don't have file names, they must be embedded in the project file).

Extra High Contrast Window Background:

Checking this option will cause the window background behind the labels you're editing to be darker than normal, so if you have a monitor with poor contrast ability, you can still see where the edges of your labels are.

Create a log file:

If you check this box, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will log various events to a special text file. This will slow down the label maker, so we don't recommend using it except under special circumstances. You should only need to check this box if something freakish is occurring with the label maker and someone at Acoustica has asked you to turn logging on and send us the file so we can try to figure out what's going on. In all other circumstances, leave this box unchecked.

Don't auto-set paper bin or media type:

When you're printing a printable CD or DVD on an Epson or Canon printer, the label maker will attempt to automatically set the paper bin and/or the media type to use when printing. It does this because the printer will display an error message and refuse to print if the correct settings aren't made. For Epson printers, the software will set the paper bin to the "Manual" option (which corresponds to the CD tray). For Canon printers, the software will set the paper bin to the "CD Tray" option, and if the media type is set to one of the paper values, it'll set it to the "Printable disc (recommended)" option.

The label maker only sets these options when you're printing on a printable disc; when you're printing on paper, you'll get whatever options you already had selected. If you check the Don't auto-set paper bin or media type box, the label maker will no longer automatically set these values.

The Preferences Dialog Help Contents

The Text Properties Dialog

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You can do a surprising number of things to the text in a text object, and, aside from editing the text itself, you can do them all from the text properties dialog. You can access the text properties dialog by right-clicking on a text object and selecting Properties or by clicking the properties button (the one with the three little dots on it) on a text object's toolbar.

This dialog consists of a series of pages for editing different aspects of a text object. Clicking on different lines in the list on the left side of the dialog will select different pages.

If you check the "Apply changes as soon as I make them" checkbox, any changes you make will be reflected in the text object as soon as you make them. This is not completely conventional behavior for dialog windows, which normally require you to press the "OK" button before showing you your changes. But we hate the blundering around we have to do when we make changes in a dialog but we can't really tell what we've done until we close the dialog and then we have to relaunch the dialog if it turns out it wasn't what we wanted. It's like flying an airplane by instruments alone: it takes a lot of expertise to do it well, and most people, including us, don't have that kind of expertise. So we added the Apply changes checkbox. We think you'll like it.

If you don't have the "Apply changes as soon as I make them" checkbox checked, changes you make won't take effect until you click the OK or Apply buttons.

Clicking the Cancel button will close the dialog and reverse any changes you've made, unless you've clicked the Apply button; in that case, clicking the Cancel button will still close the dialog, but it will only reverse changes you've made since the last time you clicked the Apply button. The Apply button will be disabled if you've got the "Apply changes as soon as etc." box checked, because your changes will already be getting "applied" as soon as you make them.

Text Properties Dialog "Font" Page Text Properties Dialog "Text Angle" Page Text Properties Dialog "Text Color" Page

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Text Properties Dialog "Size & Position" Page Text Properties Dialog "Margins" Page Text Properties Dialog "Paragraph" Page Text Properties Dialog "Curving" Page Text Properties Dialog "Background" Page Text Properties Dialog "Color/Transparency" Page Text Properties Dialog "Justification" Page Text Properties Dialog "Word Wrapping" Page Text Properties Dialog "Columns" Page Text Properties Dialog "Fields" Page Text Properties Dialog Individual Field Pages

Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Text Color" Page

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This page lets you change the color in which your text is displayed. If you had a section of text

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selected when you launched the Text Properties dialog, changes you make here will only affect the color of the text you've got selected. If you didn't have any text selected, your changes will affect the color of all text in the text object.

Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker displays selected text in the standard Windows selection colors, so if you change the text color of a text selection, you won't actually be able to see the color change until you close the dialog and unselect the text.

In the current incarnation of the Label Maker, you can't create new custom colors from this page. To create custom colors, you have to click on the color button on a text object's toolbar.

Aside from these caveats, using this page is pretty simple. Click on a color, and your text will become that color.

The Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Background" Page

This page lets you choose the shape of a text object you've created with Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker. You can select from these categories:

Shape: Rectangle or Round

Choose rectangle, and your text object will have a rectangular background. Choose round, and its background will be roundish (to be precise, it will be an ellipse).

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Speech Balloon

This feature lets you make your text object into a speech or thought balloon, such as you have probably seen thousands of times in the newspaper comics pages, or in comic books, or on billboards, or, perhaps, in an imaginative moment, in the clouds. Select Speech Balloon, and your text object will have a triangular tail that you can drag around and resize until it points wherever you wish. Select Thought Balloon, and your text object will trail a series of little thought balloonlets, which you can likewise drag and resize. Select None for a traditional, balloon-free text object.

You can't resize or move your thought or chat balloons from inside the Text Properties Dialog. To resize or move your chat/thought balloons, you need to exit the dialog and click on your text object's chat tail or one of its little thought balloonlets. This will cause three size markers to appear. You can drag these about to move or resize your text object's chat or thought tail. If you want to move the chat or thought tail to another side of your text object altogether, direct your attention to:

Balloon Tail Location

This group of radio buttons will be enabled if you've chosen the "Speech Balloon" or "Thought Balloon" options on this page. These buttons let you select the side of your text object on which you want to display your chat or thought balloon tail.

The Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Color/Transparency" Page

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This page lets you choose your text object's background color. It's quite simple: click on a color, and your text object's background will become that color. Or, if you'd prefer your text object to have a transparent background, you can check the "Transparent" box.

Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Font" Page

This page lets you change the fonts used for displaying the text in your text object. Bring this page up by clicking on the "Font" line in the listbox on the left side of the text properties dialog.

If you had a section of text selected when you launched the text properties dialog, changes on this page will only affect the text you've got selected. If there's no text selected, your font changes will apply to all the text in the text object.

You've probably seen controls resembling all the ones on this page before. The "Font" dropdown list lets you choose a different typeface. The "Size" dropdown list lets you choose your font size. The Bold, Italic, Underline, and Strikeout checkboxes let you apply (or not) these effects.

The Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

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Text Properties Dialog "Justification" Page

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This page lets you choose your text's horizontal and vertical justification. It works as follows:

Horizontal

Left: Text will be left-justified within the text object's boundaries. Center: Text will be centered horizontally within the text object's boundaries. Right: Text will be right-justified within the text object's boundaries.

Vertical

Top: Text will be top-justified within the text object's boundaries. Center: Text will be centered vertically within the text object's boundaries. Bottom: Text will be bottom-justified within the text object's boundaries.

If you're dealing with text on a CD label, the text's justification could also be affected by the word wrapping options you've selected.

Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Margins" Page

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This page lets you change your text object's horizontal and vertical margins. Setting these fields lets you increase or decrease the amount of space between your text object's borders and where the text will be allowed to print. Setting a left margin of 1 centimeter, for instance, means that text will start printing 1 centimeter to the right of the text object's left border, not 1 centimeter to the right of the label's border.

If you're settings margins for text on a CD or DVD label, the margins will affect not just the text's distance from the edges of the label, but from the edges of the label hole as well.

The Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Size & Position" Page

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This page lets you change the size and position of your text object. This is probably easier to do outside the text properties dialog, simply by clicking on a text object's title bar and dragging it to move the object, or by dragging one of the text object's red resize bars to resize it.

However, if you're the punctilious sort, or you believe that the dimensions of all elements in your labels must be factors of the Fibonacci sequence, or of the lotto numbers that made you a millionaire, then this page will be just your pace. In that case, you can just type your favored location and width and height into the provided fields.

Note: "distance from label top" and "distance from label left" refer to distance from the top and left of your label's bounding rectangle. So if you're editing the position of a text object on a CD label, which you have probably noticed is circular, the left and top distances measure from the spot you would get if you made an imaginary rectangle completely enclosing the label.

The Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Text Angle" Page

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This page lets you change the angle at which your text displays. Bring this page up by clicking on the "Text Angle" line of the listbox on the left side of the text properties dialog.

If you click the 0 degrees (normal) checkbox, your text will display in normal, right-side-up fashion, just like you're used to seeing it.

If you click the 90 degrees (straight up) checkbox, your text will climb straight up the label. If you click the 270 degrees (straight down) checkbox, your text will descend straight down the

label. If you click the 180 degrees (upside down) checkbox, your text will display upside down,

starting at the bottom of your text object. If you're having a hard time picturing any of this, check the "Apply changes as soon as I make

them" box, and then start checking the different boxes described above. You'll catch on in no time.

If you set your text to any angle other than 0 degrees (normal, right-side-up text), you won't be able to edit the text by just clicking on the text object. Instead, its toolbar will grow a new button

that opens a text editing window. For more information, see the "Edit Text" window for

angled text. The Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Word Wrapping" Page

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This page contains some esoteric stuff that affects how your text will word-wrap.

Ignore Label Edges:

If you check this box, you can drag a text object partially off a label, and it won't affect how the text object word-wraps. The result will be that some of the text in the text object won't be visible, because it will be off the label. If you uncheck this box, dragging a text object partially off a label will cause the text to word-wrap when it reaches the label boundary instead of waiting until it reaches the text object's margin.

Hole Handling:

encounters the hole in the middle of a CD or DVD label. Your choices are:

These options let you choose how you want your text to word-wrap when it

Ignore Holes: Pretends the hole isn't even there. If you select this option, text that crosses the hole will be invisible, because the text object won't try to wrap around it at all.

Wrap on left side: Wrap text to the left side of the hole. If your text object lies entirely to the right side of the hole, this setting may produce unhappy results.

Wrap on right side: Wrap text to the right side of the hole. If your text object lies entirely to the left side of the hole, this setting may produce unhappy results.

Wrap on widest side: Wrap text on whichever side of the hole has the most room within the text object's boundaries.

Wrap on both sides: Wrap on both sides of the hole. Print as much text as will fit on the left side of the hole, then skip over to the right side of it and print text there as well.

Skip to bottom of hole: Go around the hole entirely, and don't resume printing until you've gotten to the bottom of it.

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Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Fields" Page

This page, which only appears on the properties dialogs of tracks text objects, lets you choose between fixed and variable field widths.

In variable-width mode, each field of each row will be exactly as wide as required to display the amount of text. The title field for "You've Certainly Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts" will be wider than the title field 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.

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

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

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tracks listings.

Line Break After Each Row

it's unchecked, multiple tracks will appear on each line, space permitting.

: If this box is checked, each track listing will start on a new line. If

Space After Each Row (cm)

: If there's not a line break after each track, this control specifies how much space should appear between tracks that display on the same line. This control will be disabled if the Line Break After Each Row control is checked.

Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog Individual Field Pages

When you launch the text properties dialog for a tracks text object, you'll see one of these pages for each field in the text object. For an audio CD, they'll be labeled Number, Song Title,

rtist, Length, and so on. This page lets you edit properties of whichever tracks field you've

selected. If you check the

to hide the field.

Field is visible

checkbox, the field will be displayed on the label. Uncheck it

The

Field width

edit control lets you decide how wide you want the field to be, provided you've got the text object in fixed-width fields mode (you can set this on the Text Properties Dialog "Fields" Page). If you're not a numbers-oriented sort of person, you can also do this outside the text properties dialog by clicking on the text object to select it and then dragging the field boundaries in the header bar to resize them.

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The

Space after

field lets you decide how much blank space you want between this field and the next one, provided you've got the text object in variable-width fields mode (you can set this on the Text Properties Dialog "Fields" Page). You can also do this outside the text properties dialog by clicking on the text object to select it and then dragging the column boundaries in the header bar to resize the spaces between them.

For an explanation of fixed vs. variable width fields modes, check out the Text Properties Dialog "Fields" Page.

Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Columns" Page

This page, which only appears on the properties dialogs of tracks text objects, gives you the option to display your CD tracks in multiple newspaper-style columns.

How Many:

This control lets you specify how many columns you want.

Style:

This control lets you specify how you want your text split between columns. In balanced mode, each column will contain an equal number of tracks (or as close to equal as possible). In front-loaded mode, the first column will hold as many tracks as will fit, then the second column will hold as many of the remaining tracks as it can fit, etc.

Margin between columns (cm):

between each column, in centimeters.

This control lets you specify a margin that will appear

The other controls on this page apply to particular columns. They'll be disabled unless you've set the how-many-columns control to be 2 or more.

Column Number:

controls apply to.

specifies which column the Horizontal Orientation and Hole Wrapping

Horizontal Orientation:

column.

specifes the horizontal orientation for text in the currently selected

Hole Wrapping:

CD hole) for the currently selected column.

specifies the hole wrapping mode (what to do when the text encounters the

Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

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Text Properties Dialog "Paragraph" Page

Line Spacing:

text; 2.0 means double-spaced text, etc.

This control lets you set line spacing for a text object. 1.0 means single-spaced

Extra Indentation:

These controls let you specify extra text indentation on a per-paragraph

level. If your text is left-justified, the extra indentation will be on the left; if your text is right-

ustified, the extra justification will be on the right; if your text is centered, extra indentation

doesn't apply and these controls will be disabled.

1st Line (cm):

paragraph.

Lets you specify, in centimeters, extra indentation for the first line of every

Other Lines (cm):

paragraphs.

Lets you specify, in centimeters, extra indentation for all non-first lines of

Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

Text Properties Dialog "Curving" Page

This page lets you make your text curved (or not), and lets you set various properties for how curved text should behave.

Text Curving:

Straight: With this setting, your text will display in a straight line. Since most of the other options on this page all relate to curved text, they'll be disabled if you've selected the straighttext setting.

Curved: With this setting, your text will display in a circle (or an ellipse, to be more exact). Spiral: With this setting, you text will display in a spiral.

Fit Curve to Label:

If you check this box, the ellipse that your curve follows will automatically be centered on the label and will have the same aspect ratio as the label. It's the default option. Check this box if you want your text to curve around the edges of the label. If you uncheck this box, your text will fit itself to the bounding rectangle of your text object, and you can resize the text object to change the dimensions of the ellipse that your text follows.

Curve Direction:

Clockwise: Curved text will circle your label in a clockwise direction.

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Anti

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-Clockwise: Curved text will circle your label in an anti-clockwise direction.

uto Choose: Curved text will circle in a clockwise direction if it's primarily on the top half of the

label, and anti-clockwise if it's primarily on the bottom half. For spiral text, it will always go clockwise. If you have the Fit Curve to Label option checked, your text object will be centered on the label, so it will usually go clockwise.

Starting Angle:

Use Horizontal Orientation: The software will use your horizontal-orientation setting to determine where the text should start. If you've chosen left orientation, the text will start at the leftmost edge of your text object. If you've chosen right orientation, it will end at the rightmost edge of your text object. If you've chosen centered orientation, the text should both start and finish an equal distance from the center of your text object. Note that if your text is in spiral mode and it fills more than one complete revolution, the text will be treated as if it's left

ustified, regardless of your horizontal orientation setting.

Fixed Angle: The text will begin at the angle you choose. 0 degrees is directly to the right (3 o'clock). The angle increases in a counterclockwise direction, so 12 o'clock is 90 degrees, 9 o'clock is 180 degrees, and 6 o'clock is 270 degrees. If you've got the Fixed Angle setting checked, you can click on the circle to the right of the "Fixed Angle" radio button to choose a start angle, or you can use the spin control on the edit box underneath the "Fixed Angle" radio button to adjust your start angle by one degree at a time.

The Text Properties Dialog Help Contents

New Project Dialog

This dialog lets you start fresh with a brand new, blank set of labels. All you need to do is decide what sort of new label you want to create:

CD with jewel case: this creates a project with a CD label, a CD jewel case insert to slide into

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the front of your jewel case, and a CD jewel case back insert to attach inside the back of the

ewel case.

DVD with DVD case: this creates a project with a DVD label, a DVD case cover for wrapping around the inside of a DVD case, and a DVD case insert for inserting into the left-front panel of the inside of the DVD case.

Mini/Pocket CD: this creates a project with a mini CD label (a CD with an 8-centimeter diameter instead of a normal CD's 12-centimeter diameter), plus a jewel case insert to slide inside a mini-sized jewel case.

Help Contents

Save As Theme Dialog

This dialog lets you save your current project as a theme that will show up with all the artistbuilt themes in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's Instant-Label Wizard. How often do you get the chance to see your work displayed alongside the work of professional artists?

New Theme Name: Enter a name for your new theme here. It will appear under this name in the Instant-Label Wizard after you've saved it.

Stuff to Save:

Text Objects: If you check this box, any text objects on the labels in your project will get saved in the theme.

Images: If you check this box, any images in your project, both foreground and background, will get saved in your theme.

Colored Shapes: If you check this box, any shapes you've added to your project will get saved in your theme.

Background Color: If you check this box, the background colors you've selected for the labels in your project will get saved in your theme.

Help Contents

Tiled Background Settings Dialog

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This dialog lets you set an image from your computer as a tiled label background and control a variety of settings for how the image gets tiled. Here's what all the controls do:

Real-Time Preview:

If you check this box, any changes you make will display on the label immediately, so you can see how well they work. If you uncheck it, you won't be able to see your changes until you click the OK button to exit the dialog.

150 DPI:

This option will tile the image at 150 dots per inch. It's the default option for bitmapbased images. (For vector-based images, such as WMF files, dots per inch effectively has no meaning, so you'll have to set custom rows and columns.) If you tile at resolutions lower than 150 DPI, there's a good chance the image could begin to look grainy or distorted when you print it.

300 DPI:

This option will tile the image at 300 dots per inch.

Custom DPI:

choice.

This option will let you tile the image at the dots-per-inch resolution of your

Custom Rows/Columns:

columns instead of dots per inch.

This option will let you choose your tiling resolution in rows &

Keep Aspect Ratio:

This option only applies to the Custom Rows/Columns tiling mode. If it's checked, the image will always maintain its original aspect ratio, so if you change the number of rows, the number of columns will automatically change to keep the aspect ratio constant, and vice versa. If you uncheck this option, you can set both rows and columns precisely, but if you change the aspect ratio, the image could appear stretched or squished.

Cropping Controls:

The cropping options let you crop the image so that portions of it don't get displayed. The cropping amounts you specify in these controls are measured in pixels. The default is 0 pixels (no cropping at all).

Justification:

These options let you control horizontal and vertical justification for your image. You can align your image to the left or right edges of your label, or center it. You can align it vertically to the top or bottom edge of the label, or make it centered vertically on the label.

Blend Edges:

This option will blend the edges of the image together so that there's not a visible seam between the tiles. This option generally works best on images that don't have sharply defined contours or objects on them - a photograph of clouds, for instance, would be a good candidate for the blend-edges effect. If you're not sure whether or not it will work for your image, go ahead and check the box and see. It takes almost no effort, after all - you'll consume less than half a calorie, in our judgment - to uncheck the box again if it doesn't look good.

Help Contents

The Printer Calibration Wizard

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If your printer just can't seem to line up your labels correctly on your label sheets, this wizard can help. It prints a test sheet that helps you measure how much alignment error your printer has and then automatically compensates for it on future printouts.

Please note that since this wizard works by printing calibration tests on paper, it works well for handling alignment errors on label paper, but isn't suited for handling alignment errors for CD trays that you insert into your printer for printing directly onto printable CDs or DVDs. To align your printable CDs, try using the "Edit Paper Templates" Dialog, which you can access from the "File" menu.

Printer Calibration Wizard Test-Sheet Page Printer Calibration Wizard Alignment Page Printer Calibration Wizard Finish Page

Help Contents

The Printer Calibration Wizard:

Print a Test Sheet

Page

On this page of the wizard, you'll intialize your printer to print an alignment test sheet that you can use to measure how far off your printer's alignment is. Once you click the "Next" button, the wizard will print the alignment test sheet on the printer you've chosen on this page.

Printer:

hooked up to your computer before you click the "Next" button.

Paper Bin:

test page.

Properties:

set features unique to your printer, such as print quality, ICM management, etc. The alignment test sheet is a simple black-and-white printout, so it's unlikely that you'll need to make any adjustments here.

Number of Copies:

Just printing one will help, but printing multiple copies and comparing them will help you determine whether your printer's alignment is off by a consistent amount or whether it varies from print job to print job.

If your alignment does vary from sheet to sheet, it's difficult to pick a precise alignment amount that will work. You might try picking average values and then using the stretch settings on the Printer Alignment dialog (click the "Alignment" button on the Print dialog to get to the Printer Alignment dialog).

Paper Size:

One more note on paper alignment: be sure your paper fits snugly in the paper tray, and there's no space between the edges of the paper and the tray's paper guides. If your paper

Choose the printer you're testing alignment for. Make sure the printer is turned on and

Choose the paper bin that you want your printer to use for printing the alignment

Click this button to launch your printer's custom properties dialog, which lets you

Decide how many copies of the alignment test sheet you want to print.

Choose the paper size that you'll be printing your alignment test sheet on.

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has room to slide around inside the paper tray, there's a good chance that this will cause alignment errors on a large variety of printer models.

Printer Calibration Wizard Intro Page Printer Calibration Wizard Alignment Page Printer Calibration Wizard Finish Page

Help Contents

The Printer Calibration Wizard:

On this page of the wizard, you'll enter the horizontal and vertical offsets to account for the alignment error you measured on the aligment-test sheet that just printed.

Horizontal Adjustment:

crease crosses the axis labeled "Horizontal Offset". Enter the number you measure in this edit control. If the fold crease is above the center line, you'll be entering a negative number. If the crease doesn't have the same offsets on the two grid lines at the edges of the sheet as it does on the center grid line/axis, it's an indication that your printer feeds paper through itself crookedly. (Although it could mean that you just didn't fold the sheet perfectly -- check that first.) If it doesn't feed straight, try using the value at the center of the sheet and then compensating for the printer's drift with the stretch settings in the Printer Alignment dialog (accessible by clicking the "Alignment" button on the Print dialog).

Vertical Adjustment:

fold crease crosses the axis labeled "Vertical Offset". Enter the number you measure in this edit control. If the fold crease is above the center line, you'll be entering a negative number. If the crease doesn't have the same offsets on the two grid lines at the edges of the sheet as it does on the center grid line/axis, it's an indication that your printer feeds paper through itself crookedly. (Although it could mean that you just didn't fold the sheet perfectly -- check that first.) If it doesn't feed straight, try using the value at the center of the sheet and then compensating for the printer's drift with the stretch settings in the Printer Alignment dialog (accessible by clicking the "Alignment" button on the Print dialog).

Print another test sheet with my revised settings:

"Next" button, the wizard will print another copy of the alignment-test sheet with the horizontal and vertical adjustments you've entered on this page, so you can see if they produce a perfectly centered page.

Few Bonus Calibration Tips:

* Make sure your paper fits snugly in the paper tray! If your paper has room to slide around inside the paper tray, there's a good chance that this will induce alignment errors. Checking this could eliminate the need for alignment correction altogether.

Unfold the sheet you printed, turn it sideways, and see where the fold

Unfold the sheet you printed, turn it right-side up, and see where the

Alignment

Page

If you check this box, once you click the

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* If the alignment-test sheet indicates that your alignment is much worse than you expected, make sure you checked the correct paper-size option before you printed the sheet. The paper size that the wizard thinks you printed on will be noted near the top-left corner of the alignment test sheet. If you checked the A4 box but inserted a sheet of letter paper, for instance, the alignment sheet will obviously be off center.

* Some printers will feed differently depending on the paper thickness. If you want to be absolutely sure you've got your alignment as accurate as possible, try printing the test sheet on a sheet of your actual label paper. This will cost you a sheet of your label paper, of course, so you may prefer to wait and see first whether you were able to compensate for your printer's alignment just by printing the test sheet on plain paper. If you do decide to print an alignment sheet on a sheet of label paper, make sure you've checked the right paper size setting. In particular, lots of DVD-case-cover sheets use A4 paper. If you're used to printing on lettersized paper, measure your DVD cover paper before you print an alignment test sheet on it to make sure you know what size it is.

* Some printers just don't have consistent alignment. One printout will be off in one direction, and another will be off in a different direction. You can test for this by setting the "Number of Copies" control on the Test-Sheet page of the wizard to print multiple copies of the sheet. If each sheet has a different alignment error, you probably can't make alignment adjustments that will always work. Your best bet is probably to enter an average value on this page and then try to compensate for the printer's inconsistency with the stretch settings in the Printer Alignment dialog (accessible by clicking the "Alignment" button on the Print dialog). Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker defaults to a stretch setting of two millimeters, which means that a label you print will be two millimeters taller and two millimeters wider than the actual size of the label on the sheet, in the hopes that this extra bleed area will prevent minor alignment problems from causing edges of the label not to get printed on. If your printer is a schizophrenic wreck and displays wildly different alignments from sheet to sheet, you might need to increase this value.

* Since this wizard works by printing calibration tests on paper, it works well for handling alignment errors on label paper, but isn't suited for handling alignment errors for CD trays that you insert into your printer for printing directly onto printable CDs. To align your printable CDs, try using the "Edit Paper Templates" Dialog, which you can access from the "File" menu.

Printer Alignment Wizard Intro Page Printer Alignment Wizard Test-Sheet Page Printer Alignment Wizard Finish Page

Help Contents

The Printer Calibration Wizard:

Finish

Page

If you got this far, you've finished the calibration wizard. Congratulations! We had every

confidence that you'd arrive.

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If you printed a second test sheet to see how well the printer calibrates with your revised alignment settings, try the familiar fold-and-measure-the-creases routine again to see if your changes have improved matters. If you're happy with your adjustments, click the Finish button to close the wizard and save your changes.

If you decided you don't need to make any changes here, just click the Cancel button to close the wizard without saving the alignment adjustments you made.

If you want to keep fiddling with your alignment, you can click the Back button to change your alignment offsets again and reprint the test to see how it works.

If for some reason you want to discard your changes but then apply them later in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's Printer Alignment dialog, you'll need to know that the Printer Alignment dialog doesn't deal in negative numbers. Instead, negative offsets on the "Vertical Offset" axis correspond to the "up" direction on the Printer Alignment dialog and positive offsets correspond to the "down" direction, while negative offsets on the "Horizontal Offset" axis correspond to the "left" direction on the Printer Alignment dialog and positive offsets correspond to the "right" direction.

Printer Calibration Wizard Intro Page Printer Calibration Wizard Test-Sheet Page Printer Calibration Wizard Alignment Page

Help Contents

djust an Image's Size & Position

Dialog

This dialog lets you change the size, position, and aspect-ratio preservation of an image you've added to a label. All units in this dialog are in millimeters.

You can access this dialog by right-clicking on an image and selecting the "Adjust

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Size/Position" option from the menu that pops up or by clicking on an image to select it and then selecting the "Adjust Size/Position" option from the Image menu.

Distance from label top (mm):

your image.

Distance from label left (mm):

your image.

Width (mm): Height (mm): Preserve original aspect ratio:

the label maker will automatically adjust the width (or vice versa) so that the image's aspect ratio is preserved. If you uncheck this box, you can change your image's height or at will without affecting the image's width (or vice versa), and consequently make your image look as stretched or scrunched as you like.

Closes the dialog and saves your changes.

OK: Cancel:

Help Contents

The width of your image, in millimeters.

The height of your image, in millimeters.

Closes the dialog and discards any changes you made in it.

djust a Shape's Size & Position

The distance from the top edge of the label to the top edge of

The distance from the left edge of the label to the left edge of

When this box is checked, if you change your image's height,

Dialog

This dialog lets you change the size, position, and aspect-ratio preservation of a shape you've

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added to your label. All units in this dialog are in millimeters. You can access this dialog by right-clicking on a shape and selecting the "Adjust Size/Position"

option from the menu that pops up or by clicking on a shape to select it and then selecting the "Adjust Size/Position" option from the Shape menu.

Distance from label top (mm):

your shape.

Distance from label left (mm):

your shape.

Width (mm): Height (mm): Preserve original aspect ratio:

Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker will automatically adjust the width (or vice versa) so that the shape's height and width are always exactly equal. If you uncheck this box, you can change your shape's height at will without affecting the shape's width (or vice versa), and consequently make your shape as stretched or scrunched as you like.

Closes the dialog and saves your changes.

OK: Cancel:

This dialog lets you set absolute positions for a shape without regard to where they're overlapping label boundaries, so you can end up moving a shape to be in the hole of a CD label, or outside the label altogether, so that it's not visible. If you do this accidentally (or purposely, and later change your mind), but you're unable to select the shape to move it, click on your label (to give it the keyboard focus), and then pressing the Tab key will cause focus to tab through all the objects on your label, and your shape will eventually get selected.

Help Contents

Why's the

The width of your shape, in millimeters.

The height of your shape, in millimeters.

Closes the dialog and discards any changes you made in it.

Align

Menu Disabled?

The distance from the top edge of the label to the top edge of

The distance from the left edge of the label to the left edge of

When this box is checked, if you change your shape's height,

The Align menu aligns objects on your label. If you don't have an object selected, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker doesn't know what to align, so this menu will be disabled.

Select a text object, shape, or image by clicking on it, and a selection frame will appear around it, indicating that the object is selected and that you can move it and resize it, among other things. Once you've selected an object, the options on the Align menu will be enabled and eagerly waiting for you to click on them.

Bonus tip: If you're trying to align or justify the text within a text object, the Align menu isn't the

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place to do it. Instead, launch* the Text Properties Dialog, then go to the Justification page of the dialog. If your text object isn't a Tracks object, its toolbar will also have a little justification control on it that you can use to quickly set the horizontal justification (for vertical justification, the Text Properties Dialog is your only option).

* To launch the Text Properties dialog, you can either:

1) right-click on the text object and select the "Properties" option from the menu that pops up

2) select the "Properties" option from the "Text" menu

3) or click the little button on the text object's toolbar that looks like a chevron

Help Contents

Why's the

Text

Menu Disabled?

Because you haven't selected a text object to play with. Click on any text you've added to your label. This will make it the selected object, and it will grow a red sizing frame & titlebar, and a toolbar will appear underneath it. Now the Text menu should be enabled, and choices you make from this menu (excluding the "Create a new text object" option) will apply to the text you've selected.

If you don't have any text on your label, try clicking on the "Text" button on the main toolbar or selecting the "Create a new text object" item from this menu to add some.

Help Contents

Why's the

Because you haven't selected an image to play with. Click on any image you've added to your label as a foreground label (if you want to edit your label's background image, go to the Background menu instead). This will make the image the selected object, and it will grow a red sizing frame & titlebar, and a toolbar will appear underneath it. Now the Image menu should be enabled, and choices you make from this menu (excluding the choices for adding or downloading more art) will apply to the image you've selected.

If you don't have any foreground images on your label, click on the "Art Search" or "Art Browse" tabs to add some. Once you've found an image there that you want to add to your label, just left-click on its thumbnail and drag it onto your label.

Image

Menu Disabled?

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Help Contents

Why's the

Because you haven't selected a shape object to play with. Click on any shape you've added to your label. This will make it the selected object, and it will grow a red sizing frame & titlebar, and a toolbar will appear underneath it. Now the Shape menu should be enabled, and choices you make from this menu (excluding the "Create a new shape object" option) will apply to the shape you've selected.

If you don't have any shapes on your label, try clicking on the "shape" button on the main toolbar or selecting the "Create a new shape object" item from this menu to add some.

Help Contents

Why's the

Shape

Menu Disabled?

Background

Menu Disabled?

Because you haven't selected a background image for your CD label or insert. Most of the items on this menu apply to editing your background image, so if you don't have a background image, those menu items won't be available.

To add a background image to your label, try one of these: * Click on the "Backgrounds" tab to browse through the backgrounds that come with the

software, and just click on a thumbnail to make it your label background. * Click on the "Art Search" or "Art Browse" tabs to add your own art as a label background.

(Once you've found an image here that you want to make your label background, either double-click on its thumbnail to make it a standard background, or right-click on it to see some of your other available options.)

Help Contents

Frequently Asked Questions

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Printer Troubleshooting FAQ Can I print a label directly onto a CD? Where can i get label paper? How can I import my own graphics and put them on labels? I printed and nothing happened. How can I import the song titles from the CD I burned so I don't have to type them all in?

Help Contents

Can I print a label directly onto a CD? Where can I get label paper?

There are a variety of printers available that can print directly onto a CD. Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker currently supports several models from Epson, Canon, and Primera, among others. For direct-to-CD printing, you can't use regular CDs; you need to buy printable CDs instead. These are usually labeled as printable CDs and have a white surface.

Several companies make CD label paper; you can find it at most large electronics stores and some large discount stores. If you're just starting out printing CD labels, we also recommend you buy a CD label applicator. It's a little plastic device, usually selling for a few dollars, that makes it much easier for you to get your labels aligned correctly on your CD.

If you don't want to print jewel case labels on plain paper, you can buy premade jewel case label stock at the same places you find CD label paper. It's usually perforated and is thicker than typical printer paper.

How can I import my own graphics and put them on labels?

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

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.

If you've found an image you want to make your background, you can do it one of these ways:

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

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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. 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 left-click the image's thumbnail, drag it onto the label and release the mouse button, 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.

If you've found an image you want to add to your label as a piece of clip art (rather than as the label background), 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, or paste them from the clipboard.

I printed and nothing happened.

If nothing came out of the printer, it's likely that you selected a different printer than the one you expected to print on. Click the "Print" toolbar button to launch the Print dialog, then check to see what printer is listed at the top of the dialog in the "name" field. Is this the printer you meant to print on? If not, set it to the correct one.

If you got a blank page from the printer, you probably either tried to print a blank label - one you hadn't added any images, shapes, or text to -- or your hard disk is nearly full. If your hard disk doesn't have at least 200 megabytes of free space, your printer driver is likely to have trouble creating the temporary files it needs to print with.

How can I import the song titles from the CD I burned so I don't have to type them all in?

If you burned an audio CD, Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker can usually import your song information from the playlist file you created with your CD Burner program. When you burned the CD, your CD Burning software should have created a file storing the names of all the song files that you were burning onto the CD. If you didn't save this list, please do so from now on -it will save you lots of typing.

If you click the "Tracks" button on the CD Label Maker's toolbar to launch the CD Contents dialog and then click the "Import" button on that dialog, the Label Maker will pop up a dialog that lets you find & select the playlist file you used to create your CD. Once you select the file,

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the Label Maker will scan the playlist file, load your song information from it, and display it in the CD Contents dialog.

If you burned your CD with the Acoustica MP3 CD Burner, you can click the "CD Label" button on the CD Burner's toolbar and the CD Burner will launch the Label Maker and automatically tell it the names, artists, and lengths of all your songs. If the Acoustica CD Burner asks if you want to save before it launches the Label Maker, click the "yes" button.

Help ContentsWelcome

Support

If you need additional support for Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, please visit our web site at:

www.acoustica.com/support.htm

Help Contents

Purchase & Registration

With the trial version of Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, the program will be fully functional until your trial expires. Once your trial expires, you won't be allowed to print labels again until you register your software.

Why Register?

* you can print as many labels as you want * tech support * free art! If you're registered you get access to more than 1,000 free backgrounds and 100 themes, all designed exclusively for Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker. * with your support, we can afford to add new features and make more high-quality, easy-touse software * it's easy

You can buy a registration code now over the Internet and receive the code via e-mail within minutes. Just click the "Buy" button on the Label Maker's main toolbar or select the "Buy now and register" item from the Label Maker's Help menu.

If you're not running Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker right now, you can go directly to our website and purchase a code. Just click on this link:

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BUY NOW!

And thanks for registering! We'll be proud to have you as a customer.

Help Contents

About Acoustica

ddress:

Acoustica P.O. Box 728 Oakhurst CA 93644 USA

Website:

www.acoustica.com

nfo:

Acoustica is located in California's Sierra foothills, near Yosemite National Park. We've been around since 1998. Our mission is to create fun, easy to use software that lets you get stuff done and enjoy doing it.

Help Contents

Credits

Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker Copyright © 2001-2006 Acoustica Inc. All Rights Reserved. Programming and design by Russ Cary, Joseph Clarke, and Brian Hughes. Featuring art by Rich Powell, Tim Ibbotson, Ramona Clarke, & Ronnie Nijmeh. Extra thanks to Ronnie Nijmeh, Lois Clarke, Donda Bird, Greg Birkel, and the Beta Team. Avery and all Avery brands, product names and codes are trademarks of Avery Dennison

Corporation. For more information on Avery(r) products, call (800) 462-8379 in the U.S. or (888) 462-8379 in Canada, or visit www.avery.com.

Lorenz Bell and all Lorenz Bell ® products, product names and codes are trademarks of

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Lorenz Bell, Ltd. For more information about the products, visit www.lorenzbell.com.

Help Contents

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Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual