iPod Touch album artwork thread

[chall5]

If you are anything like me you will be fussy about your mp3 tags and artwork.

I finally got all my all my tags sorted a while ago but since I got my Touch with the larger artwork display I have become fussy about getting good quality artwork for all my albums. The following is a list of tips I have learnt whilst trying to get all my artwork in check.

Feel free to add to the list, I'm sure there are many more tips :-

1. Always get the iTunes artwork if it is available as it is v good quality. Right click on track 1>Get Album Artwork and the artwork, if available, will be attached to each track on the album.

2. iTunes will only inform you if it can't find the artwork so if you right clicked and selected Get Album Artwork and nothing appeared to happen it did get the artowrk - double click a track to check.

3. iTunes artwork is 600x600 pixels.

4. You can edit the iTunes artwork by right clicking on it, selecting copy, then pasting in to an image editing app of your choice (I use Paint Shop Pro). You can then make any changes you like (usually removing the Parental Advisory sticker if you are like me) then re-attach to the album in iTunes.

5. If possible, try not to have two separate artists with the same album name (ie. Greatest Hits) as this seems to confuse the Touch, hopefully this will be fixed in future as this cannot always be avoided

6. Google image search is a good source of CD covers but only use if the artwork isn't available from iTunes. Alternatively scan the cover (you own the CD right) at something like 400-600dpi and resize to 600x600 then import
in to iTunes.

7. Right clicking an album and clicking 'Clear Downloaded Artwork' will only delete the artwork if you have downloaded it from iTunes. If you have manually added the artwork to the tracks you will have to delete from each individual track manually (see next tip).

8. If you have added artwork manually (ie. not downloaded it from iTunes) you have to delete the artwork from each track individually. Do this by right clicking on the first song in an album>Get Info>Artwork tab>highlight artwork
(by clicking on it) then click Delete. Instead of having to Get Info for each track you can click Next>Delete through all tracks on the album deleting the artwork for each track as you go. This is much faster than opening Get
Info for each track.

9. If you find a good res picture of a CD cover on the web you can drag it from your browser in to iTunes. You need your browser half screen and iTunes half screen. Highlight all tracks in an album right click and select the Artwork tab then just drag the image from your browser in to the Artwork window and the artwork will be attached to all tracks.

[vandlism]

Also, if you want to delete the manually added album art for an entire album, shift click all the songs in the album and select Get Info. In the Get Info box, there is an "Artwork" field in the mid-right region of the window. It should be blank, and you can clear out all album art for the songs by checking off the blank Album field.

[pleb]

haha yea I have ocd when it come to album art and ide tags.

I use to use http://www.thejosher.net/iTunes/index.php, but it doesnt work anymore, hopefully some1 will fix it soon.

Also I hate using "get album art" button in itunes, because it doesnt add it to the ide tag of the mp3, but keeps it in the itunes setting folders. However if I am desperate, I do use it, for 1 song of the album, copy to psp or ps, remove that single mp3 from itunes, use tag and rename to add the album art to the whole album, drag album to itunes and consolidate library.

To get the album art i use google, wiki, etc etc, and I always try and get sizes greater than 500x500 px.

This app is also great.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/album-art

[Joedy]

Great post, Chall5.

-joedy

[blueharvester]

I usually get the album artwork from iTunes first, open the tag editor, copy the image, save it to desktop, and then convert it to JPEG. I then remove album artwork, and manually add this newly created JPEG image as the album art. This way the album art is in the actual mp3 file as opposed to a separte referenced folder on you computer.

[chall5]

I usually get the album artwork from iTunes first, open the tag editor, copy the image, save it to desktop, and then convert it to JPEG. I then remove album artwork, and manually add this newly created JPEG image as the album art. This way the album art is in the actial mp3 file as opposed to a separte referenced folder on you computer.

This is a v good point, I suppose Apple do this to keep you using iTunes

@joedy - thanks

[blueharvester]

Of course, even the album artwork of iTunes is not perfect, so if you're REALLY particular about your artwork, then inspect it first, which I'm sure you will ;) . For example, the album artwork for Belle & Sebastian's The Boy With the Arab Strap has a bit of fluff covering the 'r' of 'Arab'!! See here (http://picasaweb.google.com/ryan.mccollum/BelleSeba/photo?authkey=Hx0hTCpIxIU#5129738849115792674).

[chall5]

Of course, even the album artwork of iTunes is not perfect, so if you're REALLY particular about your artwork, then inspect it first, which I'm sure you will ;) . For example, the album artwork for Belle & Sebastian's The Boy With the Arab Strap has a bit of fluff covering the 'r' of 'Arab'!! See here (http://picasaweb.google.com/ryan.mccollum/BelleSeba/photo?authkey=Hx0hTCpIxIU#5129738849115792674).

ha yes I have that album aswell, hadn't noticed that but the cover they give you for Madonna The Immaculate Collection has dirt on it and the cover for REM's Automatic For The People has a white dot over a letter in 'people' which I'm sure wasn't on my CD cover !

[Shakezoola]

Lets say the album art is not a perfect square?Will the iPod touch automatically convert it to a square or will it keep its original dimensions

[blueharvester]

Lets say the album art is not a perfect square?Will the iPod touch automatically convert it to a square or will it keep its original dimensions
The iPod touch keeps the original dimensions. I've noticed a few pieces of album art downloaded from iTunes are not perfect squares, but they still look perfectly fine on the touch.

[andybno1]

cdcovers.cc has a large resource for cd covers aswell as dvd's and games and what not this site offers high res images, if you dont find what you want on the site register for free on the forums and have a scout, if you cand find them still you make a request and someone generally will kindly send you the album cover to your email inbox

[PowerFullMac]

The best thing to do is do a Google Image search for "<insert album name here> artwork" and it will come up... Thats what I do, but most of the time I do without album art, I dont like most of it anyway.

[blueharvester]

The best thing to do is do a Google Image search for "<insert album name here> artwork" and it will come up... Thats what I do, but most of the time I do without album art, I dont like most of it anyway.

I used to do this but I found a lot of the images returned from google were not correct dimension, low quality etc. I will only use google image search now if I can't get the album art from iTunes itself.

[DeadlyB]

Thanks for the post. It helps answer a lot of questions that I've seen lately.

[newappleboy]

I used to have problems with adding artwork through iTunes' automated feature, especially when it came to moving my 20,000+ song library from PC to my shiny new MBP; about half my songs didn't have the artwork moved with them since iTunes had stored them locally.

But have no fear - I've found a solution. Having recently switched, I've discovered the absolute joy of AppleScripts. Here (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=embedart) is the one I love the most. Just install it, then highlight the songs of an album where you've had iTunes fetch the cover art, then run the Embed Art script and it'll take the locally stored artwork and embed it straight onto the track. Works like a charm. Hope this helps others.

Yay for :apple:!

[blueharvester]

I used to have problems with adding artwork through iTunes' automated feature, especially when it came to moving my 20,000+ song library from PC to my shiny new MBP; about half my songs didn't have the artwork moved with them since iTunes had stored them locally.

But have no fear - I've found a solution. Having recently switched, I've discovered the absolute joy of AppleScripts. Here (http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=embedart) is the one I love the most. Just install it, then highlight the songs of an album where you've had iTunes fetch the cover art, then run the Embed Art script and it'll take the locally stored artwork and embed it straight onto the track. Works like a charm. Hope this helps others.

Yay for :apple:!

I really need a mac!!

[Chris CA]

I usually get the album artwork from iTunes first, open the tag editor, copy the image, save it to desktop, and then convert it to JPEG. I then remove album artwork, and manually add this newly created JPEG image as the album art. This way the album art is in the actual mp3 file as opposed to a separte referenced folder on you computer.

Then instead of adding a few hundred kB artwork per album, you get to add a few hundred kB artwork per song.
:(

[sk8mash]

I found the best way to get artwork is using an app from the apple site on your dashboard. you play a song in itunes, and you can set the app to get the album artwork from a variety of sources. I selected amazon.com and it works like a charm. all perfect album art! :)

Yay for :apple:

[pulsewidth947]

I'm quite picky about my album artwork. But I don't like embedded artwork. The problem is I own lots of music that isn't on the Apple store. After much googling and head scratching I found the following:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006100111071871

NOTE: You will need to be fairly savvy to do this method. Its not that complicated really, but still. If you have leopard then you already have Python installed. You need to scroll down to near the bottom to get the updated script.

But I now have lots of lovely artwork - filled in using the Amazon web service. It's going to look stunning when I pick my iPod Touch up tomorrow lunch time. Man I'm such an Apple geek :rolleyes:

[imgonephishin]

Then instead of adding a few hundred kB artwork per album, you get to add a few hundred kB artwork per song.
:(

I completely agree with Chris. When you have a lot of songs, you're talking about adding 12 times the album cover space to your files (assuming an avg. of 12 songs/album). I checked a number of Apple's artwork downloads and they were about 300 KB on avg. Let's pretend you have 30,000 songs. 30K songs would work out to maybe 2.5K albums. Under Apple's method, this requires about 730 megs for album art. If you placed the graphic inside each file, we're talking 8.5 gigs instead. I, for one, applaud Apple for figuring out a way to not embed the artwork in the actual file.

One thing I'd love to see is a freeware/shareware program that could find more artwork that Apple's can't (i.e., scan Google Images or Amazon) but still use Apple's database structure for storing the files so they're not in each individual file.

[pulsewidth947]

One thing I'd love to see is a freeware/shareware program that could find more artwork that Apple's can't (i.e., scan Google Images or Amazon) but still use Apple's database structure for storing the files so they're not in each individual file.

My post above links to instructions for doing exactly this.

[imgonephishin]

My post above links to instructions for doing exactly this.

Haha. Yes, but you see: you said that you need to be "fairly savvy to do this method." Don't overestimate my abilities. Call me picky and a whiner, but I need a GUI wrapper! :D

[pulsewidth947]

I may have overstated the need for savviness :)

If you use Web Settings Assistant (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17880/web-settings-assistant) to change your hosts file, it's not hard at all just a case of following the instructions. Here's basically what you have to do in simple terms:


Download the script, and Python if you not on Leopard. Make sure you get the newst script, linked to in the comments,
Install Python if you on 10.4.
Download Web Settings Assistant (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/17880/web-settings-assistant) and use that to edit your hosts file. The iTunes store will temporarily not work.
Go to iTunes click Advanced > Get Album Artwork. It'll scan and tell you it couldn't find anything.
Now open safari and go to http://localhost/ and it'll bring you up a list of all your albums without artwork. Click on an album and point it at a URL (Amazon image, google image, etc)
Do this for all your remaining albums, and once you are finished go back to iTunes and do Advanced > Get Album Artwork and it'll load your images this time.
Now go back to Web Settings Assistant, and remove the entries from your hosts file.
Done.


That's basically it. There are some other steps - like using terminal to launch the Python script, and reloading the hosts file, but they are included in the scripts README file. It's not difficult really - just like following a recipe. There is another step involving signing up for an Amazon web account to allow you to get artwork from them. I recommend that as you can then get the script to do most of the hunting for you.

It may involve more clicking then an automatic GUI version, but there isn't a GUI version anywhere and I doubt there ever will be! But if anyone codes - please prove me wrong :)

[imgonephishin]

Thanks for the clarificaiton, pulsewidth947.

I thought I'd give it a try. Somewhere along the line, though, something went wrong. I downloaded the WebSettingsAssistant and the newest version of the script. I followed all of the directions, but when I went to Safari for the "localhost" step, it said no connection could be found. Any tips?

I'm wondering if the python coverArtServer script isn't loading correctly. When I "sudo ./coverArtServer.py" it asks for the password and then just goes to the next terminal entry line (Jack:coverArt1.1 tom$). I would expect it to go to a blank line until I control-c. I notice that later in the instructions it says to control-c to kill the server, but that obviously doesn't do anything in my case. No idea if any of my description just made sense, but that's where I stand.

[Chimpy]

Excellent tips, thanks everyone!

[pulsewidth947]

I'm wondering if the python coverArtServer script isn't loading correctly. When I "sudo ./coverArtServer.py" it asks for the password and then just goes to the next terminal entry line (Jack:coverarttom$). I would expect it to go to a blank line until I control-c. I notice that later in the instructions it says to control-c to kill the server, but that obviously doesn't do anything in my case. No idea if any of my description just made sense, but that's where I stand.

What version of Python are you using? Are you using OS X 10.4 or 10.5? Did you download the newer version of the script (towards the bottom of the page). Have you edited any of the files? Have you signed up for Amazon Web Service?

Most importantly, are you using a web server - either Apples web sharing or MAMP or anything on port 80? The fact that it goes back to Jack:coverarttom$ does suggest that it's unable to start the server. Did you flush the cache after editing the hosts file ("dscacheutil -flushcache" in 10.5, "lookupd -flushcache" in 10.4)?

This is all I can think of right now - I'm no expert :)

[Slip]

Yeah I have to admit that I fall into the catergory of artwork and ID3 tags OCD. I usually check Wiki first to see how good it is and if its not up to much then I do a google search and then pick out the highest quality - either image quality or if they're all similar then the best res.
One tip for people who don't know how to apply artwork to the whole album (like myself :rolleyes:) is to select the whole of the album then either a) Press Cmd + G to open the little artwork browser in the bottom left hand corner of iTunes and then paste your artwork from google or wherever into there (make sure you click on the text above the little browser so it says 'Selected Item') or b) Select the whole album again and then hit Cmd + I to set the info for all of the selected tracks and then paste the artwork into the 'Artwork' section (also useful if the tags aren't correct such as wrong album or the spelling is incorrect and want to change the whole album info in one go)
Hope that helps :)

[imgonephishin]

One more thing, is there anything wrong with this? My hosts file is set up like:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
127.0.0.1 ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net
127.0.0.1 a1.phobos.apple.com

[Slip]

^ Errr...

[pulsewidth947]

One more thing, is there anything wrong with this? My hosts file is set up like:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%lo0 localhost
127.0.0.1 ax.phobos.apple.com.edgesuite.net
127.0.0.1 a1.phobos.apple.com

Nope thats just fine.

[imgonephishin]

What version of Python are you using? Are you using OS X 10.4 or 10.5? Did you download the newer version of the script (towards the bottom of the page). Have you edited any of the files? Have you signed up for Amazon Web Service?

Most importantly, are you using a web server - either Apples web sharing or MAMP or anything on port 80? The fact that it goes back to Jack:coverarttom$ does suggest that it's unable to start the server. Did you flush the cache after editing the hosts file ("dscacheutil -flushcache" in 10.5, "lookupd -flushcache" in 10.4)?

This is all I can think of right now - I'm no expert :)

Thanks for the responses. To answer the questions: I'm not positive what version of Python I'm on, but I'm running 10.5.1 if that narrows that down. I downloaded the newer version of the script (although it says it's good for iTunes 7.4 and I have 7.5, could that be any problem? I doubt so, but just checking.) I signed up for the Amazon web service and edited that file to include my key.

AFIK, I'm not running any server on port 80 (I checked my sharing prefs, but is there anywhere else I should look?) And yes, I flushed the caches.

Don't worry if you don't know anything else to do, but I'm just checking. Thanks!

[pulsewidth947]

Hm thats odd. I'm using 10.5.1 and iTunes 7.5 also. You have the latest Python if you are using 10.5. Not really sure what else to suggest - maybe a restart or something?

[imgonephishin]

Update... Restarted and tried the process over from scratch. For some reason now I get the default Apache Web Page splash when I go to localhost instead of the file not found error I was getting before, but still no luck overall. I'll keep looking into a few things and be sure to let you know if I find anything. Thanks for the help.

[pulsewidth947]

Update... Restarted and tried the process over from scratch. For some reason now I get the default Apache Web Page splash when I go to localhost instead of the file not found error I was getting before, but still no luck overall. I'll keep looking into a few things and be sure to let you know if I find anything. Thanks for the help.

Oooooooh!! That's a step forward. Go in to system prefs - sharing and make sure personal web sharing is unticked. That apache web page means there is a web server on your mac, which just needs to be disabled.

[imgonephishin]

That's really bizarre, because I never turned on web sharing again. I guess the restart did it. Unfortunately, this puts me back where I started. Localhost can't find a page. Oh well, no need to waste any more time on me. I always find a way to screw these things up! Thanks for the help.

[pulsewidth947]

That's really bizarre, because I never turned on web sharing again. I guess the restart did it. Unfortunately, this puts me back where I started. Localhost can't find a page. Oh well, no need to waste any more time on me. I always find a way to screw these things up! Thanks for the help.
That's a shame. It's a really nice way of adding artwork. It's got to be something simple, but I know nothing about Python!