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Album art in iTunes? The increase in files size?

D

DaGrandMastah

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 19, 2011
677
23
I just noticed this right now. Basically I'm in the process of converting my entire collection to iTunes file structure/format and am reembedding artwork. I've been using google and I can find a file that's approximately 125 kb's (600 x 600) and DRAG the file from the safari window into either the album art box in the left hand corner and/or the get info box and the size of the files will increase significantly.

For instance, I grabbed a 135 kb album artwork for Adele 21 and it jacked up the size of the album by 10 mb's. Alternatively, if I save that file directly to my computer and drag it, as a file, into that same box, the size of the album only increases proportionate to the size of the file so 135 kb's x 16 songs (approximately 2 mb's).

Is there a reason fro the difference? Does this have to do with iTunes converting the file to png if dragged from the safari window.

I was purposely avoiding higher quality artwork cause the file sizes were increasing so significantly. I was more worried downstream when I dragged these albums to my iPhone.

I just want to make sure I'm not missing something. If this is the route that I have to go then that's fine with me. I'll proceed with saving each individual file and going about it that way.
 
When "Get Info" is selected for multiple files and a jpg is dragged onto the Artwork box, iTunes converts the jpg to a PNG before embedding it. On the other hand, If you highlight multiple files (without selecting "Get Info") and just drag the jpg to the box in the lower left, iTunes embeds the image in its original format.
 
BlackMangoTree said:
When "Get Info" is selected for multiple files and a jpg is dragged onto the Artwork box, iTunes converts the jpg to a PNG before embedding it. On the other hand, If you highlight multiple files (without selecting "Get Info") and just drag the jpg to the box in the lower left, iTunes embeds the image in its original format.
Click to expand...

But that's the thing...it's not doing that. Highlighting all the songs and dragging it into the get info OR lower left hand box does the same thing. The only way that to ensure that it deosn't change the format seems to be to save the actual file/jpg and then drag over the file into the lower left hand window. If you just take the file from the safari window it'll convert it but I didn't know that was the case.
 
I am glad I found this post. Am I understanding correctly that you can drag an album art picture from the web to the Album art Icon to the left of the song and it will put the art in its place?

I noticed itunes does not do a very good job at finding album art. I have been using the Zune software which has very good at finding the art, and if it doesn't you get the option to browse for it by entering the artist, and searching for the album that contains the song in which you need art. It works very well. Is this an option for iTunes as well?

Not sure if this matter. Using Mac Mini 2011 with Lion.
 
tshrimp said:
I am glad I found this post. Am I understanding correctly that you can drag an album art picture from the web to the Album art Icon to the left of the song and it will put the art in its place?

I noticed itunes does not do a very good job at finding album art. I have been using the Zune software which has very good at finding the art, and if it doesn't you get the option to browse for it by entering the artist, and searching for the album that contains the song in which you need art. It works very well. Is this an option for iTunes as well?

Not sure if this matter. Using Mac Mini 2011 with Lion.
Click to expand...

Yes you can. I personally would not let itunes find the artwork because it does not individually tag each file with said artwork. In order to do that you need to highlight all teh files and manually drag the artwork over to the artwork section (bottom left corner of itunes).

Now, if you do go about that method, ensure that you save a jpeg of the album art onto your computer and physically drag that file to the area.....this will ensure that itunes tags the mp3's with artwork in the existing format....if you drag the file/picture directly from the browser into the artwork section then itunes converts that file to different format that can sometimes quadruple the size of the file..
 
Asides from the get Album Artwork option in iTunes is there anyway to get all the appropriate artwork? I've tried TuneUp and certain scripts but I am still missing certain artwork.
 
My understanding of how itunes handles artwork is that it is based on both the old method of embedding images into the actual metadata and the newer method of having a separate folder to store all the album images.

When you drag images to the information artwork panel, itunes will embed it into the file's metadata, whereas if you drag images to bottom left artwork window, itunes will store the image in a folder like downloaded store artwork.

I generally download the itunes artwork, drag the jpg from the bottom left hand album panel to the desktop, highlight all the tracks and the get info, drag the image from the desktop to the get info image panel, so it get embedded in the metadata.
 
This has been a great thread, as I'm just starting to clean up my iTunes library and I need to upgrade a lot of album art.

A few quick questions:

This thread started pre-Mountain Lion. Does anyone know if the advice in this thread is still accurate vis-a-vis the latest version of iTunes? That is, does iTunes still work as described by 'quasinormal' in the post above?

Also, are there any benefits to using .png rather than .jpg? I know .png files are bigger, but are there benefits to that file format vs. the .jpg format?

Thanks very much.
 
I don't think anything has changed.

ITunes seems to convert the .jpeg to a .png in the embedding process. I think that if you drag an image to the desktop from the bottom left box and the artwork is already embedded in the files, it wil be a .png file. The cover should also be visible in the Finder file icons also.

I'll have another look at iTunes. Although I dragged my entire music folder to the new 10.8 install the store artwork folder images didn't seem to show up. I am hoping the missing artwork will indicate which albums I need to embed.

Edit-as blackmango tree says.
 
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