What Resources Do You Use To Add Quality Album Artwork To Your Digital Library?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by mwheelerk, May 14, 2019.

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  1. Bart

    Bart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    When I read this, I thought that "paint.net" must be some sort of cool web-based image editor. But it maps to a hardware store that sells paint.
     
  2. hvbias

    hvbias Midrange magic

    Location:
    Northeast
    What can I say, I am an analog guy :D
     
  3. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    It's called paint.net because it is a paint application that is written with Microsoft's .NET software development tools. It's unfortunate that the name choice ends up looking like a domain name.

    Paint.net the application is located at getpaint.net.

    Paint.net is a good paint and image editing program. Good features like layers and it's easy to use for this sort of image editing program. It supports some photoshop plugins. It's main limitation is lack of color management and lack of a content aware fill. It can be a good tool for editing scans of cover art.
     
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  4. KenJ

    KenJ Forum Resident

    Location:
    Flower Mound, TX
    I want accurate to my item so ideally I scan. Since that is too much work I scrape from Discogs. I try album art exchange for some but getting the correct cover variation is more work and not always available.

    I like getting full booklets from Discogs but the resolution often is t very good.

    Scanning exclusively my own including backs and disc would be ideal
     
  5. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    But so time consuming.
    I scan full booklets for a few of my rips, but not many (very few). It's just not worth the time or effort.

    I'm not so picky about having the exact right cover for specific releases. As long as it's close to the right version of the cover art I'm fine. I'd rather have a very good quality image of a lightly incorrect version of the cover art than have a very poor quality image of the exact true to that release version of the cover art.

    I do scan cover art when I can't find something online that meets my standards. But so time consuming to do a good scan, clean it up, and make it look good.
     
    PTgraphics likes this.
  6. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    The primary sources for artwork that I search first are:
    AlbumArtExchange
    FanArt.tv
    MusicBrainz

    For certain classical labels I will go to the label/distributor web site and search for the album and find a high quality cover art.
    For example, Chandos labels often have good high quality cover art on the web site.
    If you like classical you'll learn which labels generally have good cover art available at their web site or online shop.

    You can also find some good album art images at places like Amazon, iTunes, Deezer, Google Play Music, Qobuz, and a few other sites. However, getting the higher quality images from those sites can require some special HTML-foo skills that are special for each site. So I use the Album Art Downloader tool that has scripts for each site and knows how to download the images so I don't have to. Album Art Downloader is quite handy and makes it easy to quickly search and download art from iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, etc. However, I also consider Album Art Downloader to be somewhat abusive of bandwidth of the sites it searches and downloads from. The big tech sites like Google, Apple, and Amazon can easily handle the bandwidth. But the smaller sites that the program includes scripts for can't. So don't configure Album Art Downloader to hammer those smaller sites on the first search pass. You can configure each script to search on the second search pass. Configure Album Art Downloader to hit the big sites first. You'll likely find what you want on that first pass.
     
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  7. Bart

    Bart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
    Thanks to ALL who recommended Album Art Exchange! I was not aware of that site. Fabulous!
     
    ibanez_ax likes this.
  8. The Acid Mouse

    The Acid Mouse Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    Artwork viewed on screen only needs to be 72dpi (you can play around with dimensions ie 800 x 800 pixels) but resolution only needs to be 72dpi. 300dpi is for print quality purposes.
     
  9. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    I only want the cover art to show up in the player. If I want to read the booklet, I go get it from the jewel case.
     
  10. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    That's why I only rarely bother to scan the booklet. If I do scan the booklet it is because there is some special info in the booklet that I want to be able to refer back to while listening. My CDs are in storage boxes. It's not very convenient to go find a particular CD just to read the booklet. So I scan the few that I want to have handy for reference.
     
    Carl Swanson likes this.
  11. Tommythecat42

    Tommythecat42 Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    I use Exact Audio Copy for ripping CD's, and it grabs metadata and lets you pick from a list of images. Its hit or miss if the'll be one over 600x600 , but a great convenience for bulk importing. Otherwise - I just Google the image, or grab of discogs.
     
  12. ibanez_ax

    ibanez_ax Forum Resident

    Ham Sandwich likes this.
  13. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    AlbumArtExchange is good. I've submitted my good scans there. Unfortunately the site does block access to the site for some people based on IP address and the reputation of various IP address ranges. If you have access it is great. If you don't it's going to be frustrating. The site has had problems with some people trying to download the entire set of files in bulk which uses up the sites bandwidth. Those addresses and address ranges get banned. Unortunately innocents will get caught in such blanket bans by IP address. Which is unfortunate.
     
    PhilBiker likes this.
  14. mattdm11

    mattdm11 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    I use album art exchange, however I stopped uploading files that I scanned in myself (I uploaded over 2000 original images) because to be honest, the mods and the guy who runs the site are rude, unappreciative douches who do not know how to say thank you.

    The problem now is that I can't find anything I need anymore - what I like to do is purchase a song on 7digital (FLAC only) and the find the single artwork. So, for example I'm not going to buy an A-Ha album, but I got Take On Me and found the original artwork for the single, and I edit the metadata to be a single. I have a weird thing were I don't want albums in my collection if it's not the whole album, and I don't want a lot of fluff I won't listen to, so I instead just download the single song and hunt for the artwork (I never actually buy the track until I've found the artwork). I'm down to the nitty gritty (nitty gritty being a few hundred songs) and there is no high quality artwork out there for what I'm looking for. Yes, Discogs has everything, but the scans are usually poor, so I edit them if possible, but usually just hunt to no avail. Amazing some of the singles I'm looking for no artwork exists of the single.....867-5309, Footloose, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Don't Fear The Reaper....I could keep going.

    Maybe this thread could be a thread where people post what they are looking for, someone scans it in in HQ, and then it can be edited and shared with everyone... :) I have a lot I could share, I have a few hundred more I've done since I stopped uploading on AAE last summer.
     
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  15. PTgraphics

    PTgraphics Senior Member

    I have the "Every Rose..." picture sleeve scanned and cleaned up if you need it. Seems I did it back in 2010 so it was early in my picture sleeve hobby. I usually save my pic sleeve scans at 1200, 1000, 800 and 600 pxls.
     
  16. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    You could try uploading art to MusicBrainz instead. MusicBrainz would get you wide distribution and access to the covers you upload. MusicBrainz does have different standards and policies for submissions. I haven't dived in and learned their editorial policies for tagging submissions and art submissions yet.
     
  17. mattdm11

    mattdm11 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    I would be very interested in that, thank you :)
     
  18. mattdm11

    mattdm11 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    I hate that I don't upload any more....anyone can upload an album cover, the stuff I usually scan at this point is pretty rare and just not out there. I should look at that at some point. I've gotten so many covers over the years from others, it's only fair I give back. Plus I've gotten good at it....some of my work is pretty darn impressive!
     
  19. mattdm11

    mattdm11 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    [​IMG]

    I'm proud of this one....if you only saw my source....it's a beat up digipak, I must have spent 90 minutes on this one!
     
  20. mattdm11

    mattdm11 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    [​IMG]

    I'll stop posting but not too shabby for a guy who uses Paint Shop Pro 5.0 as his primary editing tool. :)
     
  21. mattdm11

    mattdm11 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cleveland, OH
    OK one more......surprised this one has not shown up elsewhere, I never found a good version online so I scanned in my own.

    [​IMG]
     
  22. Carl Swanson

    Carl Swanson Senior Member

    Good job.
     
  23. Get2Me

    Get2Me Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    I just tried to log into AlbumArtExchange.com and found out I was banned due to VPN or IP address issues. News to me. I've used that site for years without incident. Suddenly, I'm no longer permitted to access it?

    For the record, I do not use a VPN and I'm not aware that my IP address is forbidden. What gives? Where do I go now? I scan some cover art myself, but I don't want to do that for everything, especially when I'm pressed for time and AlbumArtExchange is such a fantastic resource for hundreds of thousands (if not more!) of quality artwork. I'm super bummed. Google doesn't have everything I need and the quality isn't consistent. :cry:
     
  24. AirJordanFan93

    AirJordanFan93 Forum Resident

    It seems pretty common for him to block massive ranges of IP Addresses and your just happened to be in that range. I got banned last year and a couple of months ago I went onto the site and I could access the site but couldn't log into my account.
     
    Get2Me likes this.
  25. Get2Me

    Get2Me Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey, USA
    But you have to log in to remove the watermarks from the images. How did you get around that?
     
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