Good free cover creator?

[Buggle]

As far as I have been able to see, this has not been brought up yet.
I've got loads of CDs and DVDs in different sizes that I want to give a cover that can give them the same design.
Up till now, I've used the cover creator in Nero 8, but I do not really feel like installing that bloated stuff to just make some covers (although I own Nero8, I use CDBurnerXP now).

So my question is; does anyone of you know of some good/fancy FREE cover designing program? It needs to have templates for regular size CD and DVD cases, but also slimline DVD case (about 5mm in height).

It would for instance be cool to automatically download cover pictures and summary from for instance imdb.

I've been able to find a program called CdCoverCreator by thyanté software. Haven't used it thoroughly yet, but maybe some of you have some more recommendations. Edit: this program has no DVD slim template.

[Nick]

You might like to try UnderCoverXP
It is free and has a slimline DVD cover template. Although the template options are 7mm or 9mm there is a template editor in which you can edit this.
It has no fancy features like automatic IMDB data grab, but it's a simple, small, low-bloat application.

[Buggle]

You might like to try UnderCoverXP
It is free and has a slimline DVD cover template. Although the template options are 7mm or 9mm there is a template editor in which you can edit this.
It has no fancy features like automatic IMDB data grab, but it's a simple, small, low-bloat application.
Thank you for the suggestion. There is one large downside to this program however: it does not allow arranging a layout by adding text and resizing images, etc. I cannot use it for my purposes.

Well, I've solved my problem with Slimline templates by using Microsoft Visio. It's kind of killing a fly with a mortar, but I have it on my machine for work purposes so why not use it :). And it actually works quite ok!

[CWR03]

Memorex used to have a pretty nice label software with some great photo editing/adjusting features. It was included with a package of labels.

[Ghitulescu]

I used long time ago MS Word for this (because I had it on my PC). I measured myself the sizes and created a table that had exactly the same values. I used the same approach for my MC collection. Later-on appeared some templates on the internet, some free, some commercial.

That was in the 1995-1998 AD. Since then I don't care too much.

[PatchWorKs]

Hey, check out my (very simple) online PHP script called Covergen !

http://www.forart.it/covergen/cover.php?pagina=A4&copertina=DVD&remoto=http://www.dreaminglhasa.com/buy_dvd/img/dvd_cover_big.jpg

Command line explaination:

* pagina - means the sheet type (A4 or Letter);
* copertina - means the cover type (CD or DVD);
* remoto - is the absolute path of the remote image file you wanna use (local won't work);


Note that the script is still in alpha stage, so many functions are not yet implemented (different images for front and rear sides) or will change (red cover edge).

Feedbacks are - of course - welcomed.

[reverselookup12]

Nero 8 worked fine for me so far .did you find any good alternative for it till now .I would love to know

[Buggle]

Nero 8 worked fine for me so far .did you find any good alternative for it till now .I would love to know
Actually, I haven't been searching for it anymore. If you get the sizes right, MS Visio does wonders. If you just want to resize actual cover pictures, there are many options named in this thread. If you want full fledged options to design your own covers using text and images, and on top of that want to use actual labels to print on, I think Nero's coverdesigner is probably the one to beat. But as I said, I own Nero8 but I do not use it anymore because it's just not needed. For almost everything there is a free alternative.

I think it all depends on your personal preferences: I for one want thesame design for all of my burned DVDs, that sets them apart from my purchased DVDs. I created a template in Visio and just changed text and images and printed them. I then use a cutting slider to cut.
What I use in doing that are imdb.com to find info on the movie/film (length, year, summary, actors), covercentral to find a front image and Paint.NET (free) to resize and crop that and Microsoft Visio (not that expensive to buy for a student, I paid ~60 euros) to put it all together on a paper in the design I want.