Get the most out of your SureThing CD/DVD Labeler software! These articles explore the powerful features of SureThing CD/DVD Labeler in depth with real-world examples.

In his first column, Pete uncovers some of the mysteries about CD-Text and how it can benefit you.

One of the coolest, yet sometimes overlooked features in SureThing's design arsenal is the Text Effects tool. There are several effects available with this tool, but one in partcular seems to elude many users. The "Circular Text" Text Effect is a great way to get text to run around the edge of a CD. This is a common design element of many professionally-designed, production CDs.

One of the many powerful features in SureThing is the wrap feature. You have probably already noticed certain SmartDesigns have this feature built-in, but you may not have known how to use this feature for your own designs. We'll cover two of the possible uses of this great feature below in our 2nd "Tips and Techniques" article.

I've been having a lot of fun with the new Touchup and Effects feature. Despite being just plain fun to play with, this feature can save you time, effort, and money. With this dialog we've pretty much eliminated the need for any kind of 3rd party image editing software, and saved you the trouble of having to edit/save/re-insert images for your labels and inserts. Here are some examples of how this feature has helped me.

One feature in particular is the Circular Text tool, which lets you create text on a circular path. Copyright text, for instance, along the edge of a CD is a good example. Alas, in versions prior to 4.0, using text effects to accomplish this was somewhat difficult. If you used the right size font and length of sentence, and, of course, sized the box perfectly, and then placed the box just so, it looked really good (and if you're still using an older version, here's some info to help you use the tool). But version 4.0 changes all that. Now it's so simple, even our sales and marketing folks can do it!

CD and DVD labels just call out for circular text and SureThing keeps making it easier to get results you're looking for. With these three new enhancements your disc labels will look better than ever.

If you're a music lover and you burn MP3 discs, you'll love the latest MP3 import in v4.2. SureThing will now search your disc, including sub-folders two levels deep, to find your songs and create a playlist. No typing!

iTunes is the latest music player from Apple and works with their iTunes Music store where you can purchase downloadable song titles for 99 cents each. It's cool, fun and easy.

Ever wonder how you could insert more than one playlist field into a Circular Effect? The secret is typing the fields in yourself. You can use this trick in other places as well — all you have to know is SureThing's naming convention for playlist fields.