CD Jacquet - 1.8

This is a fine piece of shareware; reasonably priced, full-featured, and incredibly easy to use. The developer truly understands the Mac experience and has fashioned a GUI and feature set that are very Mac-like.

CDJ retrieved artwork for my CDs without fail. By the second time using CDJ, I was able to bust out a "CD Jacquet" within 5 minutes - that's printed, folded, and ready to rock! Lately it seems hard to find shareware that doesn't gouge the consumer, but CD Jacquet is such a find, a fair price and a full feature set. Well, almost full.

There are a few design oversights that relegate CD Jacquet to only occasional usage on my Mac. They are:

1. No text customization. You get to have iTunes track names and times, and the album name and author. For Jazz titles I like to include liner notes, or at least the personnel, recording date, and source (CD or mp3). Without additional text customizability, CDJ's usage is too limited.

2. Spotty implementation of text settings. CDJ let's the user fully customize the style and color of text on the front or back of the label, but the text on the spline is not customizable. This sucks - fix it!

3. I registered CDJ, but it still prints "CDJacquet.com" on the back of all my labels. Not cool. Especially since, after the feature for additional text is added, I'll need all that space for liner notes. :)

Hopefully these problems will be addressed in a future update. If not, I'll have to consider my registration fee a waste, since CDJacquet doesn't fulfill my needs, but for someone looking for a more simple CD label creation app, these shortcomings probably won't be a deal-breaker.

...if this app os ever going to move from its present stage as a "work-iniprogress" to a fully realized solution .

• Text controls - 1) There is a real need for baseline shifting, or the ability on unlock the text for a drag-reposition. 2) Changing fonts sometimes hangs, and changing fonts is a bit "clutsy." 3) Font effects need to be added (hmmmm...waiting for Tiger "text units?" : ). 4) The "line space" re-sizer dial is a cute idea, but hardly functional. A larger wheel (more movement for less change) and/or a dialog box for numberic entry is needed. Corrected, wheels could work for text paragraph width and sizing too. 5) Major ommission, a curve/warp/radius tool for text flow. 6) Obvious ommission...text kerning! 7) As many elements as possible should be transferrable to a disc-label layout
• Image Controls - 1) On the image list tool on the top right, the monad switching tool is a poor implementation. A pop-up menu should be used so that any image could appear in any window, or perhaps a browser window a la PS. 2) The tiling idea is good, but needs more flexibility, including a warping tool for radiusing and arcing (and more?) 3) Basic imaging filteers needs to be added (Tiger again?). 4) An image warping and cropping tools need to be added.
• DISC LAYOUT and PRINT CONTROLS

Goods start, but this tool needs lots of Tender Loving Care and Finessing. I've paid my money, here's my feedback. This tool fills a niche. I hope it continues to improve, because we could really use this in the Mac.

Thanks

Does this application print on the spline?

This is an excellent "Make your own" CD or DVD Album Cover creation application. It's an intuitive, powerful, and quick way to make very attractive jewel case inserts from your iTunes playlists for disks.

The only thing missing, is the ability to print matching disk labels. It seems to work well in Mac OS 10.3.5.