Plenty of companies have come up with ideas for jazzing up the business of disc labelling. Let's face it, when making a photo CD or a DVD home video, it doesn't feel right to scrawl a label with a marker pen.

HP's CD/DVD Tattoos is one attempt to improve on this. The pack contains 15 blank plastic disc covers, which you print onto using an inkjet printer, and stick onto the burned disc.

There's easy to use (and free) design software on HP's website, and the labels will work with all printers that can print 10 x 15cm paper, except, ironically, compact photo printers, as the tattoos are too big.

It works well, with the design elements being limited only by the user's imagination and the quality of the printer. We tried it on several discs, and found it worked best on plain white discs – as the tattoos are not opaque, so any text or images already on the disc will still be slightly visible under the tattoo.

The results are impressive, but those making more than a few discs every so often will find that tattooing becomes an expensive habit, since these covers clock in at some 50p a time. It might be cheaper in the long term to invest in a printer that prints directly onto the top of the disc.

Also consider
NEC AD-7173A Labelflash
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HP Photosmart Pro B9180
A range of powerful features makes the Photosmart Pro B9180 a force to be reckoned with

Canon PIXMA iX5000
The Canon Pixma iX5000 is good at what it does, but card slots and an LCD screen wouldn’t go amiss

NEC ND-4551A
Multi-format drive with labelling technology that's faster and more versatile than the HP Lightscribe

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