HOW DO YOU PRINT CD AND DVD COVERS

[PaulMcJohn]

More than that, how do you get them to actually look like real covers without spending a bazillion dollars on a laser printer and ink? All my home made covers over the years have looked like crap.

I had a laser printer quite a while ago, but I always felt that the prints - though being more saturated in terms of colour - weren't up to par with a decent inkjet print on quality paper.
Today I use a Canon A3 ix6850 which prints quite good, depending on the ink I use (no-name ink from different manufactures).
The paper I use depends on the target format - I sometimes print big covers in a 7" digipak format - quite like the bigger Elvis FTD editions. This would be my prefered format for every (!) Cover (I love the 7" format), but some scans don't have the quality to be printed in 7" size. I worked in the media industry (newspaper and printing houses) for 20 years and have some experience in image handling.

What you need to do to prevent your prints from bleaching is to "fixate" or "seal" the colours of your prints with a special liquid.
I used perfume free hairspray (no joke) in recent years but I'd like to try a professional varnish or a fixative (those which painters use to fixate their creative art).
I haven't tried it, yet, because (of the printing problems) I switched to merely collect in digital format and look at the covers on an iPad Pro, which is nice for reading a booklet.
But I'm a guy who enjoys touching cover art because of their look and feel. So I'll test these fixatives in the near future to build a new "analog" collection from digital sources.

My main problem for 7" prints is the paper. Professional prints use special cardboard which - after the print - will be sealed as you wish (matt or shiny).
You cannot print on this cardboard with an inkjet printer. Professional printing colours contain solvent, additives, binder etc. to get the best print for the target material. And inkjet paper (even in 270g) tends to be very unstable and shaky.
Using a cardboard as a basic carrier to glue the prints is quite an amount of work for one cover alone.
So I'm still searching for the best paper for decent covers.

[cdgm]

I tracked down a current copy of Sure Thing since I
I’m familiar with that one. Printed from and back art on plain paper and it looked great. Problem solved. A
It’ll be $15 after 30 days. Worth it if I don’t have to fuss about it anymore or I can try the other suggested here. NERO should have been easy enough, but I was never able to get that to work right.