iLife '04: The Missing Manual

CD Covers and Printed Playlists

In versions of iTunes before 4.5, you had to do a lot of gymnastics just to make a nice-looking song list to tuck into the CD jewel case of a freshly burned disc. Not to make you relive any bad memories, or anything, but you had to export the playlist as a text file, import it into a word-processing program, format the type, and then, six hours later…Print. Nowadays, you just choose File → Print, select a formatting option, and click the Print button.

The iTunes Print box is now full of choices:

• You can print out a perfectly sized insert for a CD jewel case, complete with song list on one side and a miniature mosaic of all your album artwork on the other, as you can see in Figure 2-5. For a simpler CD insert, there’s also a text-only option on a plain background. (If you opt for the CD jewel case, your resulting printout even comes with handy crop marks you can use to guide your X-Acto blade when trimming it down to size.)

• If you want something simpler, select Song Listing from the pop-up menu for a plain vanilla list of tracks on the playlist.

• The Album Listing option prints out a comprehensive list of all the original albums that you used when cherry-picking the songs for the playlist.

The Theme menu in the Print dialog box offers even more formatting fun, like adding User Ratings to a Song Listing sheet.

Tip

Want to use one of your own personal photos for the cover of your CD case? Just add artwork to a track (described on page 25) and then choose Edit ...