How much effort do you put into album art for your digital files?

Luckily I have found mostly high quality scans for my library including some rare Japanese Stones sets/mini LP's and a rare Japanese John Lennon boxset with all the obi's in high quality. it was worth the time and effort over the years.

Thanks for the suggestion, I never thought of doing that with the scanner !

I don't have a scanner but my parents have a small printer/scanner in there house, would I just place the set on the glass with hype sticker and save the file to the desktop or wherever?

Is it easy enough to adjust the size once you have saved the scan ? iTunes artwork is 600x600 , how would a scan turn out if you changed it to this size ?

I'll have a go anyway as I doubt I'll find this set with the SHM sticker in hi quality. Thanks again.

 

Just in case, if you have some Photoshop skills, just scan the SHM sticker then cut and paste it over a high quality version of the set cover you have.

 

If an album pops up without artwork I'll fix it. Other than that... Meh

 

How it works depends on your system but typically you place the item face down, start the scan from the computer or the scanner, and a file of the image will be made on the computer. If your scanner can initiate the scan from the scanner, it's more convenient.

For something like the Stones CDs, my preference would be to seek out scans of the actually vinyl releases. If they are blemished, have ring wear, a price sticker, all the better. I dislike scans that have been touched up and look unrealistic by being too perfect.

Scanning takes a little practice and effort - CDs cases are easy to disassemble to extract the back liner. Most CD booklets are easy, but some are laid out as very wide "storyboards" that are unfolded to read. These will often be wider than your scanner. With such you can either take the easy route and scan them in parts, and leave it at that, or do what I do and "stitch" (overlay) the parts to reproduce the wide original. I use Preview on MacOSX to do that, Photoshop would be much easier but I am too cheap to pay for it (GNU Gimp would work as well but it sort of sucks on the Mac)

Digipaks can be a bit of a pain as when opened and placed face down they may need to be weighted down to come in contact with the scanner surface - if they aren't they may appear out of focus. Box sets may be just too much to scan - don't sweat it, download something if it's too much aggravating to do yourself.

Even more so than with hi-rez audio, don't skimp on scan resolution, you will only regret it. iTunes 600x600 is barely adequate for today's monitors. My Apple TV displays the artwork of a track on my TV at a size approximately the same as an LP. I scan at 300dpi then reduce to 75% (which roughly halves the file size) giving something like 1100x1100 for a CD booklet page. Good enough without being too large on disk.

 

I don't have photoshop skills to be honest, would probably be easier for me to scan the whole thing and mess about with the size.

Thanks that's brilliant advice, I've only got a MacBook Pro 13, it's mainly used for my music and iPod.

Most of my artwork in iTunes on the 13 inch screen looks quite sharp saving 600x600, what resolution would I scan at to save for that size artwork?

It's only going to be for mini LP's mainly with the obi.

 

Mini-LPs are great as they can substitute well for the original vinyl, scan-wise.

The thing is, this is something that is going to last you years, and screens are just going to get bigger. Some kind of integration with your living room TV is inevitable and that is much bigger than your laptop. Too low a resolution of scan and the artwork will either look very grainy if blown up to TV size or be too small if kept as 600x600. Go large, you won't regret it. 300dpi is good for the Retina display on the Mac.

 

Ok thanks again, my MacBook hasn't got a Retina display I don't think, it's a few years old now.

I'll have a go at 300dpi and see how it looks.

 

Have you tried https://albumartexchange.com/ There are lots of high-quality covers with OBI strips.

 

Thanks for this, I couldn't see it on there. Just the normal sleeve cover was on there.

 

Yeah, it's a crap-shoot, as all covers are user-submitted.

 

On a computer, and on most iPods, iTunes chooses the lowest track number with artwork to display as the 'album art' in several types of views. So if you're using the front cover of the album for track 1, it'll will show the album cover whenever a generic album view used - such as album view. In song view, if show album art is enabled, then the album art will show on the display, and the artwork for the track will display in the player at the top. In artist view the artwork will display the album artwork that is closest to the beginning of the alphabet (again the artwork for the lowest numbered track for that album) and the track artwork as it's played.

Recently I discovered that the iPhone 4 and the Android phone I have use the last track for album artwork ( so the highest numbered track), as they seem to load the highest track in first (and the first track loaded in supplies the artwork). Possibly that's what's happening for you too. Don't know about Google play though.

A workaround might be to create smart playlist of all track "1 " s and load that playlist first, let it finish loading, then load the rest of the album(s).

 

On my itunes every single album has artwork and whats on my phone i like to have the correct artwork

 

I manage my own tagging, and am constantly searching for better artwork for my files. I replace/update at least three covers a week as I find them. It's a labor of love trying to get the correct art. I always default to the original vinyl album art. If there are variations, I keep the ones that I have or know.

Some people just accept whatever they get, and that's good enough for them.

 

For the iTunes users, there's something I haven't quite managed yet. It seems there's no way to get iTunes to like embedded colour profiles in images. That only related to artwork I have to prepare or edit myself with Photoshop, but everything has to be double-checked with 'proof colours' to make sure I'll see something decent in my laptop and my phone. That's annoying, I believe it's a bug in managing colour profiles directly in iTunes.

 

Some of the art for promo CD just isn't available online so I have scanned a few, but mostly I can find them online. However iTunes usually finds the wrong art and I feel compelled to fix.

 

What DPI setting would i scan for an image 600x600 that i want to save into iTunes, Im going to re scan some of my other mini LP's if they look good.

Would it be 300 DPI or 600 DPI on the scanner setting ?

 

If I can find a half decent copy that's over 600 pixels square, it'll do!

 

too much probably. i invested in an expensive scanner. . .still haven't quite mastered the process as much as i'd like to (yet). i have a pro-license of vuscan to use with my epson v800. i then polish in gimp. being a user of album art exchange for many years, i was excited to finally being able to contribute. like i said, i know i have room for improvement. the link below will take you to the stuff i've done thus far. feedback/advice is most definitely welcome. hopefully, you'll find some of it useful:

https://www.albumartexchange.com/co...ADER&sort=DATE&status=&size=any&apply-filter=

 

Recently I did lots of LP sleeve scans, but think I should upgrade to a A3 scanner sometime.

 

Tidal has been pretty good for this purpose, and you don't have to subscribe to it either.

Go here Try the TIDAL Web Player
Search for album you want
Click on album art in question and you'll get a separate pop-up
Use screen capture tool of choice, save screencap as JPG and away you go

Tidal album art is750x750, approximately. Obviously it doesn't have everything but it's a still a good resource to have on the side.

 

Did you scan the albums in four quarters then 're-assemble' in a photo editor? That's the way I've been doing it, whilst rewarding it is very time consuming. Any other methods would be welcomed!
An A3 scanner would be ideal but cost and space are prohibitive really for what I'd honestly use it for...

 

Good to know, but this is probably easier:
iTunes Artwork Finder by Ben Dodson

 

Zero.

I gave up on digital files nearly a decade ago now.

If I play digital it's a cd in a cd player, most 95% of the tIme its vinyl.

 

Zero.

I gave up on digital files nearly a decade ago now.

If I play digital it's a cd in a cd player, most 95% of the tIme its vinyl.

 

Yes, that's what I do. Scanning the four corners of the sleeve and crossfade/merge the layers with the best (sharp) looking parts together. Sometimes also doing color corrections before exporting.