Product Reviews

BeLight Software's Disc Cover provides an easy way to design and lay out not just CD and DVD labels, but jewel-case inserts, spines, booklets and labels for VHS cassettes.

Like other BeLight applications, such as Image Tricks, Disc Cover focuses on ease of use. On opening the application, you're presented with the options of building a design using a wizard or starting from scratch. There's plenty of clip art and a variety of backgrounds. Predictably, though, it's

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of pretty poor quality. Just as well, then, that Disc Cover makes it easy to import your own art work, either from files or from your iPhoto Library. You can also import playlists from iTunes and data from iDVD projects to print on inserts or on the disc itself.

The main window is a full-size blank disc onto which you drag the various elements in your design. There's no option to display a grid, nor are there any guides, but there's a Geometry palette that allows you to manually enter x and y co-ordinates, and precise dimensions. We would have preferred the ability to drag and drop guides, though.

Our only other real criticism of Disc Cover is its performance. Although it worked well on our G5 2GHz iMac, it was frustratingly sluggish on a 1.42GHz G4 Mac mini.

When printing your disc, you can print a calibration sheet to ensure precise alignment.

Disc Cover is a neat application that delivers what it promises. However, it's no better than the CD label functionality in The Print Shop, so doesn't look like such good value.