UnderCoverXP

Chances are, if you’ve had your computer for any amount of time, you’ve burned a CD or DVD and needed a cover for it. UnderCoverXP makes it easy to create covers for a variety of types of digital media. It’s not a design program, exactly; it’s more of a utility for scaling images to the right size and printing them so that they’ll fit in whatever type of case you’re using. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of making covers; UnderCoverXP gets the dimensions right every time.

The program’s interface is plain, but it comes with different skins so that you can customize its appearance. There are two image fields, allowing you to format and print the front and back CD covers at the same time, or create two different projects at once. You simply click on each field and navigate to the location of the image you want to use, and then select what you want to print from a drop-down menu; there are covers for CDs, DVDs, and video games, and you can also use UnderCoverXP to simply print digital images. Images are scaled automatically to fit the correct format, and then it’s simply a matter of printing one or both of the images. We liked that the program is easy to use but also has some cool extra features: there’s a batch mode; you can add custom formats or edit existing ones; and the program can even provide a dummy print job name so that you can print personal items at work without raising eyebrows. UnderCover XP’s online Help file describes each of its features adequately. Overall, UnderCoverXP is an easy-to-use but flexible program for printing all types of digital media covers.

UnderCoverXP comes as a ZIP file. The program installs politely but leaves a file behind upon removal. We recommend this program to everyone.