What You Actually Need to Know About Cd Cover Size
The standard jewel case front and back panels are each 4.75 inches by 4.75 inches. That's it. If you're designing for a single-disc release, your main artwork area is a square. The full tray card insert that prints on both sides runs about 4.75 by 6.25 inches with a spine attached, and the spine width depends on whether you're doing one disc or two. One disc gets a 0.39-inch spine. Two discs push that to roughly 0.63 inches. Anything wider than that and you're dealing with a digipak or a keep case, which follow completely different templates. Most people designing their first cover don't factor in the spine until it's too late. I had a client once who sent me a front-only artwork file at exactly 4.75 by 4.75 inches and expected it to print as a full wraparound. The press ran the front and back panels but the spine came out as a blank 0.39-inch strip of white cardstock. We had to re-render and reprint the entire run. Took two extra days and cost about $400 in wasted plates. The workaround was simple: send the press a single unfolded template from the start, with the spine dimensioned correctly and the barcode placeholder positioned on the back panel. They should never have accepted a front-only file for a full wrap job.
Cd Cover Size in Pixels for Print
At 300 DPI, which is the industry standard for print production, a 4.75 by 4.75 inch square comes out to 1425 by 1425 pixels. A full jacket with a 0.5-inch spine runs about 5.25 inches wide by 4.75 inches tall, which is roughly 1575 by 1425 pixels. If your printer accepts 240 DPI instead of 300, the pixel counts drop to about 1140 by 1140 for the square panel and 1260 by 1140 for the full wrap. Going lower than 240 DPI and you will see softness in text and fine lines. Don't risk it. Here's something most guides skip: you need to add bleed. Most printers ask for an extra 0.125 inches on all sides. So your actual canvas should be 5 inches by 5 inches at 300 DPI, which is 1500 by 1500 pixels, with the important content kept at least 0.25 inches inward from every edge. If your design has color running to the very edge of the panel, anything less than that bleed allowance and you'll get thin white slivers where the paper didn't fully cover the panel during trimming. I've seen it happen on indie releases where the designer forgot the bleed and the final product looked amateurish. The fix was just resubmitting with the correct canvas size and letting the printer handle the trim. It added about ten minutes to the process and saved the release from looking bad. Color mode matters too. Set your document to CMYK, not RGB. If you send an RGB file to a print shop, they'll convert it for you, but the conversion is a guess and colors will shift. Cyan and magenta tend to get muddied, especially in darker areas. You can run a test strip first if your printer offers that service, but most won't. It costs extra and adds time. The safer path is to work in CMYK from the start and proof your colors on a calibrated monitor before you submit.
Slim cases and digipaks break the standard dimensions entirely. A slim case might hold two discs in a 0.5-inch spine, but the panel size stays the same. The difference is in how the artwork wraps around a thinner package. Some designers try to use the same template for both and end up with a spine that looks awkwardly thin on the final product. If you're going non-standard, ask your printer for their exact template file. They usually have one in Illustrator or PDF format that you can drop your artwork into. It takes the guesswork out and prevents misalignment between the front panel, spine, and back panel. O-cards are another format to be aware of. These are larger inserts that slide into a sleeve rather than fitting inside a rigid case. The typical size is 5 by 5 inches, but some artists go larger depending on the sleeve dimensions. They're cheaper to produce because there's no plastic case involved, but they offer less protection. If your release is going to sit on a store shelf or get shipped to customers, the jewel case is still the safer bet for durability. If you need a ready-made template, search for "CD jewel case template AI" or "CD cover size PDF" and you'll find free files from printers like Disc Makers, CD Baby, and various independent manufacturers. Download one, set your canvas to the right dimensions, and work from there. Don't build your template from scratch unless you have a good reason. Most of the free ones are accurate and save you from making a mistake you'll only catch after printing.
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