need to make a two-color CD

Alright - I definately don't need anything made for me at this stage, but I need ideas for how to make a two-color CD.

This is going to go on the cover of a yearbook, in which we are only allowed two colors. The background color, and then another color, which will probably be a shiny (it actually is lustrous) silver. I'm not really sure how to go about this to make it look realistic. I tried with some vector...

http://trhaynes.commscentral.net:8000/img/vectorcd.gif

...but there's some wierd patterning going on and it doesn't really look realistic. I also thought of taking a picture of a CD and then maybe vectorizing it (like high contrast/gradient map or something) but you don't really see the grooves of a CD on a picture. Or maybe its just that my camera isn't good enough. Do I want something symmetrical like the one I made? Or something with more of random curly strokes as grooves? That might be easy with a wacom :D.

So I'm just looking for your ideas as I am stuck here in this project. Thanks.

tom

well.....lets take a look at a cd.

First... what is it about a cd that makes it look like a cd?? Reflections!!! Your not actually seeing a gray circle (like you drawing)...instead your seeing a reflection of everything else in the room in a circular shape.

Second a cd has grooves (more like a series of little holes)....but they are microscopic. Only lasers can pick them up...not the human eye.

So how do you recreate this? Simple. In your cd draw a linear gradient (a dark silver color......and a lighter silver color. Im guessing u can use shades of the 2 colors). That will form the base of the refelctions. Then over that (on a new layer) draw some lines/shapes (just black streaks or squares.... simple geometry). Then bring back the opacity 50% (atleast) and use the blur tool to blur those shapes/lines. What this will do is simulate reflected objects. Now if you look very close to a cd....it has a kinda noise pattern. So open a new layer and insert some noise (not much...1 or 2 should do you). Also bring back the opacity of the noise just a bit. Make one more layer...select the cd shape and with a big fuzzy brush (low opacity...white/light silver color) just paint in some highlights.

This should give you a fairly realistic surface. Its the same technique i used to make this look chrome/metallic

http://www.geocities.com/rodder_49/case_war.html

Also that patterning is called a moire. Its caused by overlaping or repetative elements (like your circles).

Edit: Here is a pic i made (about 10 minutes) using my advice. You'll get something similar to this:

http://www.geocities.com/rodder_49/cd.html

The realism will be determined by how believable the reflections are. You might be able to get away with converting a photo to 2 colors (black and white.....100% contrast)...and lowering the opacity (so the photo becomes the reflection).


just some ideas to play with....

Yeah it actually has to be two colors, though. A background color and a solid color that gets printed on. The text and everything has to be that color, too (although that doesnt really matter). It should be two-dimensional, too, so it is a perfect circle. And it should be easily recognizable.

Any other advice? Thanks.

tom