Low Resolution
Silk screen printing will not yield the same results as offset printing. Items that are offset printed, such as jewel case inserts and traycards, are printed at 150lpi. The standard line screen for silkscreening is 85lpi. One common mistake people make is printing an image on a CD and printing that same image on the front insert of a jewel case and having the expectation that they will match. This is usually not the case. For full-color (CMYK) images, you want to consider our High Definition Digital Printing (HDDP)

Dot Gain and Dot Disappearance
Dot gain is the occurrence of halftone dots printing larger than intended, and dot disappearance happens when halftone dots below a certain weight vanish all together. Usually a halftone of 85% or above will print as a solid color because of the dot gain, and anything from 10-15% or below will not print at all because of dot disappearance.

Gradients
Gradients are probably the most unpredictable aspect of silkscreen printing. We highly recommend using any other method of disc design before attempting to use a gradient. Because of dot gain and dot disappearance (as mentioned in the previous section) gradients can produce significant tonal jumps, creating bad transition areas instead of the gradual tone shifts that can be seen on your monitor.

Fine Lines and Skinny Fonts
Be careful when knocking text or fine lines out of a single color of ink. Because silkscreen inks are applied thickly, through a screen, there is the possibility of fine lines and thin serif and script type fonts becoming filled in by the ink. Our recommended minimum line size is 0.5pt and the minimum recommended font size for a Helvetica type font is 5pt. Script style fonts and Serif fonts will have to be larger than 5pt because of their delicate lines. If fine lines and script or serif fonts are knocking out of more than one ink, then the problem is compounded even more.

Rosette and Moire
An inherent aspect of silkscreen printing is the rosette pattern. This occurs when two or more halftone screens are printed together. The result is that the halftone dots printing at different angles can create a noticeable pattern in the design. Monotones are less likely to produce this effect and solid colors will not have a rosette at all.