This is one of those "I hope this saves you the hour I have just wasted" articles.

I had to download a new version of LightScribe from http://www.lightscribe.com/downloadsection/linux/index.aspx because the old one was calling libraries no longer available with my distro, but the option to burn my own image disappeared.

Removing the old packages with dpkg -r and installing the new ones with dpklg -i was simple enough, and the program ran without problems. If you are on a 64 bit system, just remember that you need to force dpkg to install even though the architecture appears not to be correct.

# dpkg -i --force-architecture lightscribe-1.18.11.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb
# dpkg -i --force-architecture lightscribeApplications-1.18.6.1-linux-2.6-intel.deb

It's useful to run:

# /usr/lib/lightscribe/elcu.sh

if you haven't already done so, as it provides an option to make the burned images darker (rather more of a necessity than an option in my opinion).

If /opt is not in your path, you can start the SimpleLabeler program with:

$ /opt/lightscribeApplications/SimpleLabeler/SimpleLabeler

The issue for me was that somewhere between the old version and the new one, the SimpleLabeler option to burn your own image on the disk disappeared - presumably since LightScribe would rather you bought some software.

The SimpleLabeler software does provide a number of templates that can be use as "borders" and since a border can fill the entire disk, this provides a way to get your own image onto it.

The images it uses as backgrounds are stored in:

/opt/lightscribeApplications/SimpleLabeler/content/images/borders/

Where there are three directories: fullsize, thumbnails, metadata. There is one file in each directory for each border. The metadata files contain more or less nothing, just the name of the border as it appears to the user, but it seems to use UTF-16 so you'll need something like Kate to edit it. The thumnail image is only used to help users choose the border and has no effect on the final burn. So the .png file in the fullsize subdirectory is what you need.

I tried adding a new set of three files for my own image, but the program barfed when trying to burn the disk because there was something about the image format it didn't like. So in the end I just opened one of the existing fullsize images in GIMP and pasted my own image over the top of it.