Just starting to print with my new Epson R1800 and have a question about the Silver printable discs. Have been getting GREAT results with the White DVDs! My question is: If you print a photo of a wedding and the bride is wearing a white dress, will her dress look silver? Bare with me now… I’m not the brightest, and havn’t tried the Silver discs yet.
rstone7727, welcome to the forum!
Inkjet printers (and most other printers) don’t have white ink, so when you print something white on paper, the printer just doesn’t print anything in the white area.
So if you print on something with a non-white background, such as e.g. silver surfaced discs, anything that’s supposed to be white just remains the same backround color e.g. silver.
DrageMester, Exactly as I figured. With that in mind, why would anyone want to print on silver DVDs? They must look terrible! All the whites look silver! If someone has a scan of one of the silver printed DVDs (or cd) and can post it, I would love to see it. Thanks for the reply.
No, some people want to make it look “professional” like pressed discs.
I would’ve thought glossy white discs would look better than silver discs, more like the original you back up.
I’m new on this forum,so I hope my pic comes through:
If the pic shows up: Van helsing-full hub white inkjet printable
Greatest game ever played on top-sharpie/below that-lightscribe
Walk the Line- Shiny inkjet printable-reg hub.
Why shiny?
The light covers from my epson r-200 look pretty shabby.Dark ones are better. Lightscribe is ok,just a bunch of variations of brown. Shiny inkjet printable do look sharp. You get a 3d look with color. Full hubs would look sweeter.
So it basically comes down to my label/picture- before I print or scribe onto disc. Lighter pics do turn out more faded/especially the whiter ones.
I print a big volume of discs for companies and use both silver and white. From my experience with printing thousands of those I must say both are good and have their use. For the most part, silver will give excellent results,particularly for text and graphics, it will give it a shiny, proefssional look as most of the music CDs you buy are done this way. There are some times where white is more appropriate, it depends on your personal taste - Unlike pressed CDs which use silk screening processes, I have noticed that the silver CDs/DVDs are more sensitive to scratches (the printing surface). Example, someone gave me a set of Prodisc silver printable discs to print and have noticed that if you barely scratch the surface you can easily remove the silver coating and see the shiny non print surface beneath whereas with my white taiyo yuden printables, the coating is much more resistant and will not come off that easily.
For Audio CDs I would favour silver printables and for DVDs I would use white. Of course if your template is based mostly on photos, I would go for white as well. Coloured text and hard surface graphics would look well on silver as well.
Wow! Some great info! Thanks to everyone that replied, especially to “saugmon” who sent a real nice pic of different formats. It helped me get a better understanding of the available options.
Hi All,
my first post on this forum. Please bear with me…I’m also interested in the shiny tops. However, I was wondering is it a mirror effect or more of a matt like the verbs? Also regarding the issue concerning the print coming off from scratching the surface, is there a spray you can get?
Thanks, J98
It is matt effect. Just don’t scratch at the discs is the simplest way to avoid it. Personally I don’t like the silver printables.
I just made my first silver printable TY +R 8X I love the way it looks very classy IMHO I use Patricia Nimocks Clear Gloss Acrylic Sealer for the final touch.
Thanks for the replies. I was thinking of offering a marketing tool to local companies using dvdr and cdrs. I’d like to make the disks look like pressed/professional finish. So to start from the beginning:
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Is thermal better than inkjet for 1 colour black print (I was thinking about the Z1)?
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What would be the best shiny tops to use with either the thermal or inkjet, without having problems on burning with the Pioneer 111’s?
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Can you get a printable shiny/mirror top dvdr/cdr?
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Which printer in your opinions is the best for printing Full colour covers and dvds (upto £150)?
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Is it best to print the disk prior to burning or the other way around?
I may have some other questions, but none spring to mind at the moment. If you’re reading this I hope you can help.
I would be most grateful if anybody to lend me a hand in answering the above.
Cheers,
J98. (sorry about the many questions!)
- Thermal require a special printer. Never seen a thermal printed disc so can’t comment on the look of them.
- No
- If doing a lot it is better to buy a dedicated disc printer
- Either, or realy.
You will never get them to look pressed, there is the dye side to take into account.
Thanks for the reply.
What model would you suggest, bearing in mind there may be a lot of printing to do?
The dye side doesn’t bother me, I’m more interested in making the top as professional as possible. Hence my thinking that a thermal printer would offer better quality on black print (I might be wrong though).
J98
Which ever version you use silver or white it is a good idea to seal or coat the top with a sealer. The ink is not water proff, if you are going to do a lot of black printing I would go with the white top, again you need to seal it.
Like Corvette said, unless you coat them, some (all?) inks will smear if they get moisture on them. And I suspect matte surface printable disks will pick up dirt (off fingers, etc) in use.
I don’t know if non-ink printers are succeptable to smearing.
I think its best to print after burning unless what ever procedure you use is prone to printing errors/mistakes. Disks are burned at faster speeds than they are played so any minor scratches from the printing process are less of an issue after burning. Things that won’t effect playing can definetly cause a burn to be a coaster.
Nope the R800 inks are water resistant.
likw hoosierdaddy i would burn the data first, but for a different reason:
i’d want to make sure i had a goo dburn before spending the time and ink to make it pretty!
If the poster goes for a dedicated disc printer, I am sure they would use water resistant inks. It is no use asking me to recommend one, as I have never used any because they are a tad too expensive for my needs. My R220 does me fine for archiving.
I have to agree with reason, I always print after burning.
[QUOTE=rstone7727;1413971]Just starting to print with my new Epson R1800 and have a question about the Silver printable discs. Have been getting GREAT results with the White DVDs! My question is: If you print a photo of a wedding and the bride is wearing a white dress, will her dress look silver? Bare with me now… I’m not the brightest, and havn’t tried the Silver discs yet.[/QUOTE]
just started also epson artisin 725 thanks for the question and thank the rest of you for the answers great help!