How to Print Game & Movie Covers at Home

Why Print Custom Covers?

Anyone who has spent time hunting for older games or movies knows that the case is often in worse shape than the disc. Sun-faded inserts, water-stained back covers, ex-rental stickers that took the artwork off when peeled, and missing covers entirely on loose-disc copies are part of the territory. Reprinting the cover is the cheapest, fastest way to restore a case to display quality without the cost (or scarcity) of a sealed replacement copy. A four-cent sheet of photo paper and ten minutes of your time can rescue a £40 game from looking like junk on the shelf.

The second reason is curatorial. Collectors who buy loose-disc copies — common with PS1, PS2, GameCube, and DVD-format movies — usually want a presentable case. Printing the original retail cover is the obvious move, but custom collections go further: matching back-covers for digital-only Switch games so they line up alongside physical ones, alternate "what if" art, region variants (Japanese boxart on a US-region case), or full custom box sets for ROM hacks, fan translations, and indie titles that never got a physical release. None of that is possible without a tool to combine front, back, and spine into one print-ready file at the correct dimensions.

The third reason is the satisfying part: a complete shelf. Anyone who has stared at their collection long enough has noticed how much one mismatched or damaged spine throws off a row of cases. Reprinting one cover so the spine title aligns with the rest of the row — or so a faded yellow PS1 spine matches its neighbours — is a small thing that changes how the whole shelf reads. For a hobby that's largely about visual presentation, that consistency matters more than the cost of the paper.

Where to Find High-Quality Cover Art

The single biggest factor in print quality is the source image. A blurry 800-pixel-wide JPG will produce a blurry print no matter how good your printer is, because no amount of upscaling adds detail that wasn't captured in the first place. The goal is to find a scan at 300 DPI or higher — for a standard PS2 cover, that's roughly 3235 × 2173 pixels for the full wrap. Here are the sources collectors actually use:

• The Cover Project The single most important resource for game cover scans. Community-uploaded covers spanning PS1, PS2, PS3, Xbox, GameCube, Wii, DVD, and Blu-ray. Most uploads are scanned at print resolution and saved as full wraps (front, spine, back combined). When the full wrap is provided, you can crop it into separate panels for use in CoverStitch, or use the Custom preset to print as-is.
• VGBoxArt The best resource for fan-made and custom box art. Useful when the original retail cover is ugly, the digital-only release never had a physical cover, or you want region-swapped artwork. Quality varies by uploader, so check the resolution and DPI before committing to a print.
• MobyGames A general games database that includes cover art uploads from contributors. Front covers are well-represented but back covers and spines are inconsistent. Best as a backup source if The Cover Project is missing the title you need.
• Internet Archive Hosts huge media collections including scanned magazine inserts, console manuals, and full disc libraries with cover scans. Particularly useful for obscure regional releases and pre-2000 PC titles where dedicated scan sites have thin coverage.
• LaunchBox Games Database Aggregates community-sourced art from across the front-end emulation scene. Front box art is excellent; full wraps less common. Worth checking when you can't find a scan elsewhere.

Scanning Your Own Covers

If you own the original case and the cover is in good shape, scanning it yourself produces the highest-quality result possible — better than most online uploads, because no one else has compressed the file or rescaled it. The tradeoff is that scanning takes ten minutes per cover and requires either a flatbed scanner or a careful phone setup.

Flatbed scanning (recommended)

Set your scanner to 600 DPI in colour mode and scan the front and back panels separately. (Trying to scan the unfolded full wrap usually exceeds the scanner bed.) Most flatbed scans come out slightly skewed — straighten them in any image editor (Photoshop, GIMP, Photopea, or even Preview on Mac) using a "rotate by angle" tool. Crop tight to the printed area and save as PNG to avoid JPEG compression artifacts. 600 DPI is overkill for actually printing, but it gives you headroom to crop and clean up without losing detail. CoverStitch will downsample to the correct print resolution automatically when you select a preset.

Phone scanning (when you don't have a flatbed)

Lay the unfolded cover flat on a clean, evenly-lit surface — a table near a window in indirect daylight is ideal. Avoid direct sunlight (creates harsh shadows) and overhead room lights (cause uneven brightness). Hold the phone parallel to the cover and shoot from directly above. Apps like Adobe Scan, Microsoft Lens, or Apple Notes' built-in scanner automatically de-skew and crop the result, which is much faster than doing it manually. Phone scans are noisier than flatbed scans but acceptable for most prints.

Post-processing

Once you have a clean scan, the main fixes are: white-balance correction (paper should look neutral white, not yellow or blue), spot removal for any dust or scuff marks, and a light sharpen pass. Don't aggressively colour-correct — printer drivers will shift colours anyway, and over-saturated source files end up looking wrong on paper. If you're scanning a faded or damaged cover, a single curves adjustment to lift midtones is usually enough.

Step-by-Step: Using CoverStitch

Once you have your front, back, and (optionally) spine images, CoverStitch combines them into a single print-ready file. Everything runs in your browser — your images are never uploaded to a server, and there's no signup. Here's the flow:

Single mode vs. Batch mode

Single mode is the default — one cover at a time, full preview, fast. Use it for one-off prints. Batch mode is for collectors restoring a whole shelf: drop dozens of images into a pool, drag them visually into Back/Spine/Front slots for each cover, then stitch all of them at once and download the lot. The batch interface is built specifically for the workflow of "I have a folder of 50 cover scans, I want to turn them into 20 finished wraps."

Custom dimensions

If your case is non-standard — an oversized Steelbook, a digipak, a multi-disc case, an old PC big-box, or a regional variant — pick the Custom preset. CoverStitch will stitch your images at their original dimensions without resizing, which is the right behaviour when you've already prepared each panel to the exact pixel size you need. See the case dimensions reference for measurements you can use to prepare custom panels.

Printing Best Practices

Choosing paper

Paper choice does more for the final look than the printer itself. Plain copier paper looks washed out, feels wrong inside the case, and curls within weeks. Photo paper is the standard for a reason. Here's how the common options compare:

Aim for 200–250 gsm paper weight. Thinner paper feels cheap and bows inside the case; thicker paper than 250 gsm often won't fit cleanly behind the case window. If your printer specs cap at 220 gsm in the photo paper tray, don't push past that — you'll jam the rollers.

Printer settings — actual size, every time

This is where most prints go wrong. Open the file in your printer dialog and check that "Scale to fit", "Fit to page", "Shrink oversized pages" — whatever your driver calls it — is turned off. Set the print scale to 100% / Actual Size. CoverStitch already outputs the file at the precise physical dimensions for the preset you chose. Any scaling at print time defeats the entire point of using preset dimensions.

Other settings worth getting right:

• Paper size: A4 or US Letter, depending on what your printer takes. Landscape orientation for wide covers.
• Quality: Best, Photo, or 1200 DPI — whichever your printer's highest quality option is.
• Colour profile: sRGB. Not Adobe RGB, not ProPhoto. Source files are sRGB and your printer driver expects sRGB.
• Borderless printing: Enable it if your printer supports it. PS2, DVD, and Steelbook full-wraps come close to A4 width, so borderless avoids forcing the print smaller.
• Paper type: Match the actual paper loaded — set "Glossy photo paper" if that's what you're using. The driver adjusts ink density based on this.

Trimming

A guillotine paper trimmer gives clean straight cuts in seconds and keeps the front/back edges parallel. Scissors work but are slow and rarely produce perfectly straight cuts over a 270mm edge. Cut just inside the printed area — printers usually leave a 3–5mm white margin even with borderless mode on, and trimming inside the print is what makes the result look factory-made instead of homemade.

Score the spine fold lines lightly with a bone folder (or the back of a butter knife) before bending. This prevents the printed surface from cracking or "checking" along the fold, which is especially noticeable on glossy paper with dark spine art.

Laminating (optional but worth it)

Running the trimmed cover through a laminator gives it the same scuff-resistance as a commercial insert and roughly doubles its lifespan. Use 80-micron pouches — thicker pouches (125-micron+) make the cover too stiff to fold cleanly and often won't fit behind the case window. Laminate first, then trim — the lamination film extends a couple of millimetres past the paper edge and needs trimming flush. Cold laminating sheets (peel-and-stick) work too if you don't want a hot laminator; the result is slightly less durable but no equipment investment.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Printing with "Fit to Page" enabled The single most common failure. Your driver shrinks the print by 3–8% to add a margin, and now your spine doesn't sit centred when folded and the front overhangs the case. Always print at 100% / Actual Size.
• Using the wrong case preset PS2 and PS5 covers look similar but have different heights (184mm vs 148mm). Using a PS2 preset on a PS5 case wastes paper and produces a cover that's noticeably too tall. Match the preset to the physical case before stitching.
• Sourcing low-resolution art A 1000-pixel-wide JPG of a PS2 cover will print blurry no matter what you do. Either find a higher-resolution scan or upscale with an AI tool before stitching. Don't just let the printer driver scale up — that produces the worst result.
• Skipping the spine fold score line Folding glossy paper without scoring it first cracks the printed surface along the fold. The cracks are subtle but noticeable on dark spine artwork. Always score with a bone folder or knife back before folding.
• Using plain printer paper Tempting because it's cheap and already loaded, but the result looks and feels obviously wrong inside the case. Plain paper is fine for a test print to check sizing — never for the finished cover.
• Trimming before laminating If you trim first, the laminate film extends past the paper edge and looks like a clear plastic border around the print. Always laminate first, trim second, and trim flush with the printed edge.
• Wrong colour profile Source files are sRGB but some image editors save in Adobe RGB or ProPhoto by default. Printer drivers assume sRGB and will produce muted, washed-out colour if you feed them anything else. Re-export as sRGB before printing if you've edited the image.

Frequently Asked Questions