Whenever I need to make jewel case art for my demos, I fire up SureThing CD Labeler. It’s done me good so far. I could probably be far more creative with an actual publishing tool, but SureThing supports the Memorex labels I buy at the electronics store. So it’s convenient.
Until I start using Japanese.
At that point, SureThing is pretty useless. So I’ve been weighing my options — upgrade my 11-year-old copy of PageMaker 6.0? (Generally, not recommended.) Upgrade to something more industrial strength like Quark? (Which I’m evaluating right now) Or find a label-making program that supports Japanese?
I took a shot with Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker, and I was pleased that I could use Asian fonts without even having to switch locales. At first.
Acoustica has no rulers or guides. It has no object grouping or alignment. When you place a text box in the layout, an annoying toolbar is attached, and you can do nothing to get rid of it. It gets in the way when you’re trying to line up a series of text boxes.
I’m not the kind of person who uses canned layouts, so I ignored the gallery of layouts, clip art and other such stuff.
Then I got to working with the program more, and I found a number of features which absolutely outpaced SureThing.
Acoustica is very cognizant about images. If you place a background image that isn’t doesn’t have the correct resolution, it will warn you. I never gave images much thought when I used SureThing, but after being prompted by Acoustica, I went back and re-edited my images to use a resolution the program would like. And it improved my designs as a result.
As annoying as the persistent text tool bar on text boxes may be, it does provide a terrific preview of all the fonts on your system. Very convenient.
I also like the fact the UI is not dependent on the template being used. In SureThing, you specified a template, and the UI allowed you to work only on those parts available. In Acoustica, you can work on a label, an insert and traycard at the same time, specifying the template to use for each component.
I’m not a fan of the print preview. You can only see a preview of the entire label or insert right before you send a job to the printer. In short, there really is no print preview.
I haven’t attempted to print a label, but I can tell already I’m not liking the prospect — the Memorex labels I use include two per page, and so far, Acoustica is only allowing to print on one of them.
Acoustica CD/DVD Labelmaker has a lot of room for improvement, but it can do some things better than SureThing. The Asian font support was worth the price of a license for me.