DVDs, CDs, they all have to be labeled; that, of course, if you care enough to customize them. I usually do this with my DVDs that are severely damaged and I run the risk of never retrieve my data anymore. Of course I make backup copies of them first. It is a pretty cool task, as you can put your name on it, the number in your collection, etc.

The Internet is crawling with softwares capable of doing that. One of them is called Advanced CD Label Maker and its developer, Maskbit, makes it available on the market for the price of $19.95. The installation file eats up almost 3.70MB of your disk space.

The interface of the software is very easy to handle and the user will not get lost among unnecessary features and complicated options. Among its features, there are the built-in clip art images, background images and layouts, support of circular text, unlimited undo/redo, query album information from remote CDDB server and from ID3 tags of MP3files.

As you might have imagined, the biggest chunk of the application window is occupied by the working area. The other elements of the interface are the Art Gallery (the left side of the application window), the Main Toolbar (under the title bar), the Object Bar (left margin) and the Object Properties Bar (a floating dialog box).

When you begin the work, first of all, you will have to choose your label stock. The software makes available the most popular formats and you can make the design both for the cover of the disc as well as for the disc itself.

The Art Gallery will provide the user with three different types of presets: Layouts, Stamps and Backgrounds. The Layouts include eight choices, from which the Ying Yang one seemed to me as the most interesting. If you are not content with the default options, you can choose the Empty preset and begin creating your own layout, which you can also save for later use.

The Stamps section in Art Gallery is basically a collection of clip arts and not a very good one, I may add. It comprises over ninety elements that can be used only when fooling around trying to get a first impression of the software or to create something for some more conservative relatives of yours. To give you some examples, the collection includes different Santas, arrows, curtains, birthday cakes, different Christmas trees, a Valentine's Day logo, clouds, dialog boxes of various shapes etc. that you have to see for yourselves to get the picture.

The good thing is that the Background and Stamp files are image formats (.jpg and .wmf) and, if you add your own files in the Program Files folders, they will be included in the software automatically.

The Background area is not so rich either, only 26 backgrounds in here. Some of them are really worth trying, like "sea", "she17m" or "Chinese picture", others are just for the sake of it. But - as I said before - you can enrich it by yourself.

In the Object Bar, the tools you are going to find are shapes, text options and image importing. There are four shapes you can choose from: rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse and diamond. The text options allow you to write it normally or create a circular effect.

The Property Bar can be accessed from the Main Toolbar, under Edit. Its role is to give you the possibility to change the properties of the selected object. It is here where you can enter the text to be displayed on the disc. It is useless to double-click inside the text box. You can change the colors of the text, work the images a little (lighten, darken, soften, sharpen) and add effects to it, like grayscale or negative.

The Good

The software is excellent for beginners. It is a way to start your journey in creating professional disc labels.

The Bad

It is too dry and the options are scarce. But the one thing that really drove me crazy was the fact that, whenever I wanted to edit an object, I had to go to the Edit menu to do that and that pretty much sucks.

The Truth

The software was a great disappointment for me, as I thought that it was really an advanced software for creating disc labels. But I guess that it is advanced for those that have never played with an application of this kind.

Here are some snapshots of the application in action: