Obtaining original album artwork for music files

Is there anyone here besides me who gets very annoyed by the incorrect and shoddy album art of reissues in the CD age? I realize that the original intent was to market the new product for a new consumer, or to crank the product out as cheaply as possible. But, in the process, it has been changed and mutilated to the point where many don't even know what the original looked like, and, believe it or not, sometimes the original artwork can't even be found on the internet. And, if you can find original artwork online, it is often a poor, low resolution, and tiny image. And, I do not want that "Compact Disc" logo.

Sometimes I have to photoshop a better image, if I can. I collect and use images for tagging my FLAC/mp3 collection, and I like the artwork to be as faithful to the original as possible.

For those of us who use artwork to tag their digital collections, how do you handle this? Is anyone here as anal as I am about this?

 

I think I am. My process is labor intensive, but I do it because I guess I have the same perectionist tendencies. Most of the time a google image search is enough to throw up multiple options. I examine each and choose the image with the highest fidelity (color, cropping, resolution, etc).

I then download the picture and import it into an image editor, where I apply color correction (if required), resize to my chosen image size template, apply minor sharpening (if required) and finally export to jpg or png. Then I load that into the image tag in the music file.

Years ago, there was a web service which would provide you with album artwork if you provided the right details, but I think that was discontinued and am not sure if something similar now exists. But even so, I rarely used it because the quality of the artwork provided, or even the accuracy, was hit and miss, and therefore unreliable. Which is why I'd gone the manual route.

 

I've always been impressed by the quality of the scans on Album Art Exchange:

http://www.albumartexchange.com/covers.php

Here's some other possible sources of cover art:

http://www.albumlinernotes.com/
http://www.albumart.org/
http://www.allcdcovers.com/
http://www.coverhunt.com/
http://www.carlosnoboro.com/cdcovers/b/
http://www.album-cover-art.org/
http://albumcoverproject.com/
http://www.album-art-search.com/search?q=albert+king
http://www.free-covers.com/search.ph...a&search=music
http://coverparadise.to/
http://www.albumart.org/
http://www.free-covers.com/

I agree with Deesky that the quality of album art out there on the web is all over the map from horrible to excellent, but the real problem is the scarcity of certain titles.

 

My CD ripping workflow is simple and strict. If it doesn't have artwork, it doesn't go in the final directory, even if everything else is proper (tags are correct, file names are correct, file integrity is good/good rip, etc). I prefer 1500x1500 covers and won't use anything less than 1000px x 1000px. So until it's done, I can't enjoy it on the devices, and that's big incentive to get them finalized.

If I can't find good quality stuff online, I usually scan the CD inserts myself at a high resolution. After general cleanup, dust & scratch removal and color correction, if it's solid color (spot color) artwork I usually select color ranges and fill them. If it's photographic based I use descreening software very judiciously. When all is said and done I have a 1500x1500px image.

I've only just recently started scanning in my vinyl album covers. Biggest advantage there is that you usually have much higher resolution source material to begin with, and many of the later CD reissues really horribly approximate the original album cover quality.

 

Great list. Another one to try is http://bendodson.com/code/itunes-artwork-finder/index.html

 

I always seek out the best quality and most accurate artwork. I keep a separate archival folder of all the artwork I use and I am constantly evaluating and comparing artwork to find upgraded versions. I not only want the most accurate version of the cover but pay attention to image detail and color correctness.

So many times I see artwork with over saturated colors. It reminds me of TVs on display at Best Buy or Costco. They have the contrast so cranked up the images look surreal. A lot of times you will see grays with a reddish caste and whites with green.

 

Is there any kind of application that will seek out the artwork and imbed the image tag in the music file? I have over 13,000 music files as mp3s, and do not relish the idea of doing this manually. TIA.

 

What software are you using to manage your library? iTunes and others have a "Get Album Artwork" function but it doesn't embed artword. If you are ripping from your CDs some tools provide an artwork retrieval also

 

Don't use anything.

 

And, that's where the problem lies for me. I do needledrops of lots of 70s and 80s R&B, and the artwork just isn't available, and if it is, it's horrible. Even for big stuff like the Spinners' first Atlantic album, I can't find the original 1972 art. I do find the CD art, which isn't the same. Last night I found the original Isley Brothers "Forever Gold" cover, but none of the ones I found were accurate. And, the ones that were, were bad or distorted photos.

Sometimes, I just do the best I can to fix up what's available. I used to scan and stitch some album covers, but, not only do I no longer have a free program that works under Windows 7, it's a royal pain, and never turns out quite right.

 

The Smugmug labels gallery has a section for us to upload our home-crafted artwork and CD covers, but no one ever uses it any more. I can see the day the forum member who pays for the site every November will stop, and that valuable resource will go away. With the proper password, anyone can upload their work for all to use.

 

Media Monkey, and the paid version of mp3 Tag will do this, but they don't always find the correct artwork. Media Monkey will scan your computer first, then search the web. mp3 tag is configurable. But, in those cases where the programs cannot find the correct artwork, yo8u have to do what Deesky and I do, recreate it ourselves.

 

I wasn't even aware of SmugMug! I have uploaded some covers and made them available on Album Art Exchange, maybe I should look at uploading more.

 

I've used Discogs. The quality of the scan isn't always great, but most of the time, it is accurate. Albumartexchange has great quality, but for older releases, it is usually the CD only. As posted earlier, a Google image search can also be successful.

 

I'm shocked at the shoddy artwork appearing on some vinyl LP reissues. I don't know if it's because the original separations are lost/destroyed, or because the labels are just too lazy/cheap to do things right and get the original separations.

Some labels are particularly bad, like Friday Music--a lot of their reissues are clearly from pictures/scans of the original LPs--and not great ones at that...

 

I believe there are some tutorials up on the AlbumArtExchange discussion forum, and there's some free software available.

 

A second for album art exchange. Terrific hi res images.
Also, I often use "Devilfinder Image Browser". Great for finding large covers and
tons of artist/group pictures of whatever you type in. You also get a lot of unreleated
or "undesirable" images, but that's the nature of their search engine. A search used to come
up with 15 or 20 pages of images, but now they limit it to five pages (usually enough).
Here's what came up for "Ricky Sings Again" by Rick Nelson:
http://images.devilfinder.com/go.php?q=Ricky+Sings+Again

 

I'll try that!

 

Has anyone found a good scan of the 'Script' version of Born To Run? I'd like to use that for my library.

Discogs is a good resource as well http://www.discogs.com/

 

Thanks for the Album Art Exchange site. I had no idea people were this serious about it all, of course, I should know better!

The thing of it is, I thought 500 dpi was the standard for the final rendering, and that's what I have been saving my work to, without saving the original 1200+ dpi scan. 500 seems to work just fine with what I do, but now I discover that 600 is the standard.

Should I keep using 500 as my final destination, or should I use 600? I'm not submitting my work to anyplace like that site, so I should be fine, right? Also, when I do find stuff on the web that is at least 400, and needs work, I do upscale to the nearest round dpi. It's just what I do. I use Photoshop. At times, I can see a very slight degradation, but all I am using the images for is tagging for use in Foobar.

 

Why are you considering such high resolutions? Unless you're going to print poster sized images, those sorts of resolutions are overkill. I thought you just wanted to tag digital music files, in which case resolutions (as in dpi) aren't relevant, just a sufficient pixel wd/ht and image quality will suffice.

 

I still like to keep a gallery of covers. It's art.

 

It depends on how you display them. For a mobile device or maybe a small laptop monitor it may not be important but if you are displaying full screen on a larger computer monitor or in my case your HDTV images may be 2' x 2' (on my 51" screen) or larger and then you will be very happy you took the small extra step of higher resolution larger images.

 

I personally think 600dpi looks good enough, provided the scan is clean, the image is square, and the colors are right. I check a lot of this stuff out on an HD monitor on my audio server, and if it's good enough for HD, it's good enough for me.

 

600 looks teriffic on all of my devices and on my TV set. Perfectly sharp and no blurring. I can see going up to 1200, but anything beyond that seems excessive.

My AppleTV displays my iTunes library and while I found resources like AAE a few years ago and started updating new items with good artwork, I've still got hundreds that look horrible, so every week I tackle upgrading a few.