Copcartel - UK CD Manufacture To The Music Trade

What is Bleed?
Printing that extends to the edge of the page after trimming is called a bleed. To ensure ink coverage to the bleed edge, we need 3mm of background inked paper to trim away after printing as shown on our templates.

Your artwork does have to run to this line & would in any professional printing job you ever send to press, this is industry standard not just the recording industry, but for the whole printing industry...

This is because printing multiple sheet guillotine process is not ever guaranteed to be accurate & stops your finished product having a white (or other incorrect colour) border on one or more sides, this is also why cd artwork has a no text area, to stop text being cut off when they are cut in...

Correct

Incorrect - 'No Bleed'

Incorrect - Text In 'No Text Area'

CD Onbody Print Preparation

CD printing uses a different process than the paper (booklet, tray etc), and is also a much lower print resolution, so fine lines & detail will not print successfully.

Opacities or graduated fills of lower than 15% or higher than 85% ink densities will revert to 0% & 100% respectively.

Fine detail or lines will not print e.g. lines or detail thinner than 1mm

Subtle colour changes (less than 30%) will not print

A white base ink is added so that the ink colours will print correctly, so if you require any silver disk surface showing through the design please specify where in the upload or art notes.

If your Package includes a 5 Colour Onbody (CMYK & White Base) no special preparation is needed other than using the Copcartel CD template and bearing in mind the above points.

If your package includes a 4 Colour Onbody, (3 Pantone Spot Colours & White Base) please provide each separate pantone colour as a separate layer in the template with each Pantone colour code specified in the layer name.

What is the minimum font size?
It is not recommended to have any font on your artwork under 6pt in size, as it is extremely unlikely that it will be legible when printed.

What are your artwork specs?
Artwork must be 300dpi or higher & in CMYK format. Templates should be downloaded from http://www.CopCartel.com/Templates.asp All layers must be left separated (i.e. do NOT flatten them) & all fonts used included in the upload. (i.e. copied from the fonts folder on your computer) 3mm bleed must be present on all artwork except CD Label (on-body), no text within 3mm of cutting edge (6mm from bleed edge). We accept artwork in Adobe Photoshop .psd format; we can also accept artwork in Tiff or Adobe .PDF as long as they are of sufficient quality. Please check your artwork for errors and spelling BEFORE sending to us, as any art that that has to be amended or re-submitted because of customer error after we have processed it is subject to a £37.50 + Vat re-processing charge! Upload Completed artwork to: http://www.CopCartel.com/upload/ Compressing the files with ‘WinZip’ or ‘WinRar’ before upload, will considerably speed up the upload process. If you encounter any problems with the uploader, try uploading each file separately. Once a file has successfully uploaded you will be presented with a page informing you that the file has uploaded successfully. If you prefer to send your files on CD via Royal Mail please contact us on nick@copcartel.com for our postal address. If you are supplying artwork for either Copro or Casket Records, Casket / Copro rear tray template must be used & you must have a full track listing on the left hand facing page as you open the CD jewel case (e.g. page 4 on an 4 page booklet or Page 8 on an 8 page booklet). Casket/Copro Legal text is added to the cd onbody around the inner hole and outer disk edge, please allow for this in your design. Please Note:- CD-R Audio Masters are destroyed after the manufacture process and are not returned. Please make sure you have adequate backups of your Audio Master before submitting them to press. Artwork is not processed until payment is received in full!