Finding iTunes Album Cover Art
Eric Lindsay
Amazon (too many old, Eastern European classical CDs that neither iTunes
Store nor Amazon have heard of). However with the new views in iTunes 7,
it would be nice to have more than about 1% of my albums having cover
art.
Does anyone have any suggestions about methods for getting cover art?
Scanning the original CDs would be pretty painful (plus I'd have to buy
a scanner). I have contemplated taking close ups of the CDs with a
digital camera so I could put them into iPhoto, and then drag the photos
to iTunes.
Since the CDs are classical, I am not even totally convinced I need the
original covers. Something generic might be fine. For example, a
painting of Mozart for all the Mozart, and some appropriate text over
each one might be just as much use as the original covers.
Has anyone else had the same problem, and already found a solution?
patrick j
(in article
<NOwebmasterSPAM-28...@freenews.iinet.net.au>):
> Since the CDs are classical, I am not even totally convinced I need the
> original covers. Something generic might be fine. For example, a
> painting of Mozart for all the Mozart, and some appropriate text over
> each one might be just as much use as the original covers.
>
> Has anyone else had the same problem, and already found a solution?
Hi
I don't have any cover art at all on my iTunes 7.0.1. I listen to
classical music and so the browser is full of music simply copied in
from my CDs.
However reading your post it has occurred to me that if you want a
picture for the cover art space maybe you could just use a portrait of
the composer from somewhere on the web.
Wikipedia has an entry for most composers, at least I haven't yet found
a composer they don't have an entry for.
Anyway if you go to the relevant Wikipedia page there is very often a
picture of the composer there.
W. A. Mozart is looking quite chipper here don't you think?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart>
There isn't always a pic though, Elliot Carter hasn't got one, poor
fellow :(
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Carter>
You could have Alfred Schnittke in profile if you like:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Schnittke>
P.S. Hooray for polystylism!
--
Patrick
Brighton, UK
Gerry
<NOwebmasterSPAM-28...@freenews.iinet.net.au>,
Eric Lindsay <NOwebma...@ericlindsay.com> wrote:
> I'm not having much luck getting iTunes album cover art from Apple or
> Amazon (too many old, Eastern European classical CDs that neither iTunes
> Store nor Amazon have heard of). However with the new views in iTunes 7,
> it would be nice to have more than about 1% of my albums having cover
> art.
> Has anyone else had the same problem, and already found a solution?
Let Google (or your search engine of choice) be your friend. Do a search
on your album title, or artist or composer and either browse through the
results or click on the Images tab, you may be surprised at what you
find.
I do it almost daily, sometimes several times a day.
Calum
> Let Google (or your search engine of choice) be your friend. Do a search
> on your album title, or artist or composer and either browse through the
> results or click on the Images tab, you may be surprised at what you
> find.
There are a few Dashboard widgets and AppleScripts out there that can
automate this search somewhat as well, searching Google for the
currently selected or currently playing album.
Paul Sture
Calum <com....@scottishwildcat.nospam> wrote:
I've been trying out 'Clutter' for this. It searches Amazon by default,
and will search Google on request. When you find an image you like, you
can simply paste it into the Clutter window, which would work for photos
or scanned images too.
http://www.sprote.com/clutter/
--
Paul Sture
Sjaak Zwart
I use the Amazon Art widget for that. The AlbumArt widget was nice as
well, but doesn't seem to work anymore.
Furthermore, the Discogs widget and the iGoogle widget are great helpers
for this.
But there are several other programs on the market. Search for "Album
Art" at osx.hyperjeff.net/apps or macupdate.com.
--
SZ
Eric Lindsay
lie...@nieuwsgroep.alstublieft (Sjaak Zwart) wrote:
Thanks for the hints, but so far they are not actually solving the
problem of finding album art. As I mentioned, I had tried Apple and
Amazon. I failed to mention that I had also tried Google (hard to
structure relevant searches that didn't exclude too much) and later
Google Images (slightly better).
I just tried The Widget Factory's Amazon Album Art widget (which I hope
is the one you mean). I noticed the LiquidX Album Art widget had several
comments that it didn't work with iTunes 7.01, so I didn't try that.
Of the first 16 albums I tried, the widget found 5 covers, of which 4
were for the wrong album (3 of them not even the same artists). It did
find one Deutsche Grammophon cover correctly. It basically seems to
provide a faster way of discovering that you can't find a cover. I guess
that is better than a failed search I did manually, so I thank you for
pointing out that widget to me.
The problem seems to be the sources. Amazon rather naturally doesn't
have many album covers from 1990's classical music CDs of (mostly
Eastern European orchestras) distributed by outfits like Pilz and Orbis.
I did slightly better checking eBay, but as I recall, out of 800
potential hits I looked at, I only got about 12 relevant covers (for the
200 CDs I was seeking).
May try testing every album art program available, to see if one happens
to fit my CDs better than the rest.
Further hints would be welcome.
Dan Drake
<NOwebma...@ericlindsay.com> wrote:
>
> > > Does anyone have any suggestions about methods for getting cover art?
As long as we're on cover art:
What is the incantation for making the new iTunes NOT ask, every time it
starts, whether I want to connect to their source of cover art?
In the past 10 years or so, a lot of programs have picked up the idea of
offering not to show a message over and over forever, but if itunes is
offering anything of that sort, they've hidden it pretty well.
--
Dan Drake
d...@dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com/
porlockjr.blogspot.com
Adrian
> What is the incantation for making the new iTunes NOT ask, every time it
> starts, whether I want to connect to their source of cover art?
> In the past 10 years or so, a lot of programs have picked up the idea of
> offering not to show a message over and over forever, but if itunes is
> offering anything of that sort, they've hidden it pretty well.
Hidden? First Preference panel has an option "Automatically download
missing artwork" ... leave it unchecked.
--
Adrian
inaequitas
<NOwebma...@ericlindsay.com> said:
I do use www.allmusic.com when some cover art is harder to find and the
Amazon search plugin doesn't work. They also tend to have slightly
better resolution pics than Amazon which makes a difference with
CoverFLow. Of course, you have to generally search the album/artist
[and make sure you look beyond just Discography - go to Singles and
Compilations too]
--
si vis pacem
para bellum
Donald Stidwell
inaequitas <inaeq...@replace-with-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:
You can also try Corripio. I have a collection of 60 Classical CDs that
I bought in Spain and iTunes can never find appropriate cover art. With
Corripio I have about a 90% success rate in finding something
appropriate.
I do have a scanner, so for the other 10% I just scan the covers.
Don
Stravisnky
in my CD covers and added them manually, or I googled the CD and got
the artwork there.
In article
<NOwebmasterSPAM-28...@freenews.iinet.net.au>, Eric
Lindsay <NOwebma...@ericlindsay.com> wrote:
Paul Sture
Stravisnky <NoS...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In article
> <NOwebmasterSPAM-28...@freenews.iinet.net.au>, Eric
> Lindsay <NOwebma...@ericlindsay.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm not having much luck getting iTunes album cover art from Apple or
> > Amazon (too many old, Eastern European classical CDs that neither iTunes
> > Store nor Amazon have heard of). However with the new views in iTunes 7,
> > it would be nice to have more than about 1% of my albums having cover
> > art.
> >
> > Does anyone have any suggestions about methods for getting cover art?
> > Scanning the original CDs would be pretty painful (plus I'd have to buy
> > a scanner). I have contemplated taking close ups of the CDs with a
> > digital camera so I could put them into iPhoto, and then drag the photos
> > to iTunes.
> >
> > Since the CDs are classical, I am not even totally convinced I need the
> > original covers. Something generic might be fine. For example, a
> > painting of Mozart for all the Mozart, and some appropriate text over
> > each one might be just as much use as the original covers.
> >
> > Has anyone else had the same problem, and already found a solution?
> If iTunes could not give me the artwork for my cd's, I either scanned
> in my CD covers and added them manually, or I googled the CD and got
> the artwork there.
I've just been struggling with a few classical CDs from Germany and
Eastern Europe. Neither Google nor Amazon have any trace of them. For
the moment I've dug out portraits of the composers, but it appears that
scanning is the way to go.
--
Paul Sture
Sjaak Zwart
> The problem seems to be the sources. Amazon rather naturally doesn't
> have many album covers from 1990's classical music CDs of (mostly
> Eastern European orchestras) distributed by outfits like Pilz and Orbis.
> I did slightly better checking eBay, but as I recall, out of 800
> potential hits I looked at, I only got about 12 relevant covers (for the
> 200 CDs I was seeking).
>
I'm afraid that this works better with pop music than classical music.
--
SZ