Photoshop Template for Epson R260 Printing to CD

Printer manufactures bug me. Their razor-and-blade method of marketing with the capacity of ink cartridges getting smaller and smaller and the cost getting higher and higher is really annoying. Fortunately, I found a great Continuous Ink System for my Epson. More on that later.

I have an Epson R260 printer. It's a great printer. I rarely use it to print directly on CDs because I prefer to use glossy labels which give me a much better look. But I had a project where the label was all text and it became practical (and cost-effective) to print on the disc directly. I'd long since thrown the driver disk away - I always just download the latest drivers from the Internet. Unfortunately, the Epson PrintCD software was on that disk, and you can't download it ANYwhere (at the time of writing - I looked all over and couldn't find it, except here - where the web page author will email you instructions on how to download it apparently - I put in a request and haven't heard back yet...we'll see). [UPDATE: The author did contact with me with a link to download the software but I don't really need it now that I have a Photoshop template. But if you want it, I won't steal his thunder. Go to the page linked above and make a request under feedback.] It is really annoying that Epson does not provide this as a download. What about updates??? Apparently for $9.95 they'll send you another CD. Thanks a lot, Epson. Anyway, I don't need their lame software other than to align where in the world I am supposed to print so that it lines up on the CD properly. I normally just design in Photoshop, save to JPG, and use their software to print. I got tired of looking for the software and figured it wouldn't take me that long to just design a Photoshop template with guides to print the label in the right place.

It didn't take too long. The Epson driver software sets the paper size to A4 when you select CD/DVD as the source, so I created an A4 blank Photoshop page (300 dpi) and put a black circle on it (taken from another template I already had so I knew the size was right). After a few print-move iterations, I got it right.

So basically, in Epson's driver software (printing preferences) set the Source to CD/DVD, the Type to CD/DVD, and the Size (which will automatically change) to A4 (210 x 297 mm). Then use this template to line up your artwork.

In my experience, it seemed to print a little lighter than normal when printing to the CD (a matte surface on my CDs). Normally when I print from Photoshop I go into the "advanced" area of the Epson driver, select ICM, and leave the "Off (no color adjustment)" box unchecked. Using ICM seems to normally give me better color matching. In this case, I set it to ICM and CHECKED the "Off (no color adjustment)" box and this seemed to give me very accurate results. Of course, I was only printing colored text and a simple small football image, so I didn't exactly have a really colorful sample to go off, but that seemed to work best.

epsonR260-CDTemplate.psd