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iPod Where to get decent sized cover art?

S

Sgt.Pepper

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 23, 2008
68
0
Australia
So I'm starting to slowly tidy up my music collection, something which is years overdue, and is going to take a long time.
It quickly became apparent that iTunes can't find the cover art for all of my CD's and it gets it wrong occasionally too.
Does anyone know a website(s) where I can get cover art of a decent quality/size. I've been using google images so far, but often it doesn't come up with satisfactory images, or it takes me a while to find a good image, so an actual website, or a few websites would be a great help.
 
I've not changed ways since this post:
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
If iTunes music store doesn't have the album art work (ie the Get Album Artwork in iTunes doesn't work), I use these sites manually:

- wikipedia (which has album art for most mainstream albums, and many more special stuff)
- discdogs (which is excellent for some more obscure albums, especially old vinyl single covers)
- amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or amazon.de (starting to get desperate, maybe, and you may need to crop the art if you want 300x300 and not the 240x240 "preview")
- google images (well this is the last resort, it often takes some filtering, but if the album art is out there, you will find it)

...more or less in that order...
Click to expand...
 
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i use the amazon artwork widget.... download from apple.com, it's pretty awesome
 
I'm currently doing the same thing, and I've found for the most part that wikipedia is pretty good minus a few exceptions.
 
Captain Nougat said:
Those are good and I would also like to add that I go here often: www.albumartexchange.com the site is very meticulous with how they scan album art and it's user generated so sometimes the quality varies depending on what equipment they use.
Click to expand...

This site is awesome. I always use this place first, if it's not there I try iTunes.
iTunes has a habit of pulling Greatest Hits albums instead of the original album.
 
i typically just google the album name and then use google images to find a good sized graphic. Another good place to go is Amazon.com. Search for the album that you are looking for and then use their cover art image.

hope it helps....
 
I used Google image search to fill in the stuff that iTunes couldn't find. Apart from a dozen or so of the rarest albums, the search results usually had a really good 300 x 300 image in the first two rows. Lots of images came from Amazon, and those had a white border that needed trimming (Preview has a crop tool).

I'm now missing just one cover (a trance single from the 90's by Kimball & Deckard, I'm tempted to give in and just scan it myself :)

It took me ages to import everything and then find the artwork, but it makes me smile every time I see those little albums all neatly lined up with their artwork
 
Mitthrawnuruodo said:
I've not changed ways since this post:
Click to expand...

I'd go with that - discogs is pretty good for the truly anal retentive (not that version of the single cover, I want THAT one), and the more people who join and contribute, the better it'll get.

I've been surprised how much is generally available, with the main exceptions being obscure singles and compilation albums (which tend to have a short release life and are frequently specific to a territory)

Mostly I just end up scanning them, or photographing them (vinyl won't fit on an A4 scanner). Partly because it's often faster than trying to find a decent image online, but mostly because the personal wear and tear makes it all yours - this is that album that you had when you lived in that crappy (but really expensive) loft apartment and the roof leaked and it glued all your vinyl together and you spent ages separating them and half of them still tore anyway... ooh look, that's the limited edition cover I bought for $1m on Visa when I was a student and my girlfriend borrowed and spilt red wine all over at that party..
 
After much experimentation, I have abandoned art-apps forever.
The iTunes art function is moronic. "Yeah, let's save the user the trouble of waiting for the actual id3 tags to write, and just save the art to their Music folder. They'll never need to move their music and maintain art, no way."
The third-party apps I've tried gave me no luck.
Nothing's more effective than a Google image search(Don't search large only. You won't get jack.). I pick my fave pic and drag it into the info, and the album's folder.
300x300 is enough to fill your screen in iTunes art viewer. 5-600 is about all you could need. Keep in mind that the artwork gets added to the size of each file. Stay away from master-quality covers, in your tags.
 
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