[Guide] Add Album Art in iTunes Music Library

[ramymounir]

I want to know how to add a photo to my music so when i browse through my albums i can see these photos instead of seein the black square. I hope you know what i mean. it is like the difference between when you buy the music from itunes and you see it has the photo of the album cover and when you download music. can we add photos to downloaded music so it looks like the music we buy?

Thank you for your time

Ramy

[golfo]

The easiest way is to go to advanced in itunes ( on the top near help), open this and the option to get album artwork is there half way down.

I doubt it will get all of them but its a good start ( I didn't get all of mine anyway), then I simply googled the album. Amazon seemed to be the popular first choice. From here i just right clicked (windows user) on the album picture, copied, then back to itunes play song from album, in bottom left hand corner is now playing right click and paste album cover here.

Note that this copy/pasting method.

1) the quality of pic is not very good ( but as you said is better than blank screen)

2) you will have to paste the picture on every song on the album individually, also worth noting that copy and paste from internet exploror to itunes is really slow be patient, but when you have picture in itunes, simply right click again on pic in itunes and copy from here again, then it will be quicker to paste pic on next song.

Hope this helps !:)

[elasticband]

I just drag the album art from safari (or any web browser) into the itunes drop well.
Just have the tracks selected that you want to add album artwork.

or right click on a track or bunch of tracks and select get album artwork (best quality)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2187/2164833091_0140484d99.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2046/2165627014_ace35ab1f8.jpg

[automat]

you dont need to do it for every track, you just select all of them and press get info

[hks_turbokits]

Or.........

1. Open Itunes

2. Select the Song(s) You wish to have art work for -> Right Click -> Get Info

3. Go to the Art Work Tab

4. Go to Google, Find the Album Save it, then Press the Add Button.

Really use this only if you dont have a itunes account, or the song you have cant find its own artwork.

[lami]

Be careful though, image gets embeded into ID3 tag of each song, so try to keep image size resonable. Before I knew that, I set huge, ~4MB cover scan for few albums and was wondering, why it is 2 times bigger (was thinking iTunes stores it somewhere else).

Also, to show image in album list, you can set image for just one song in whole album. But when playing (in iPhone or iTunes itself), it shows only for songs where it is embeded.

And I had one image with long name, or with some weird characters in it and iTunes won't accept it, unless I renamed it.

[Former Bender]

Also, you don't need to use pictures over 300x300 as they will take much more space for nothing.

250x250 is a good compromise (size/quality).

[Anarchy]

Or for people who dont have itunes store account can download itunes art importer (http://yvg.com/)and then select the tracks from the same album search with itunes art importer and write with that program (its easier and itunes art importer searches in amazon)

[neonkoala]

Windows users:

Quickest way I have found is:

1. Right click song; Get Info.
2. Will reload "Artwork" tab after first time, click "Add...".
3. In IE/Firefox navigate to album artwork file (jpg etc) and click and drag to the open window that appeared after clicking "Add...". This effectively saves the image and then you just need select it and click OK.
4. Repeat

[JungleJim]

I've found a nice little guide explaining how to get iTunes to clean all your songs of artwork and add iTunes store ones. This may be similar to other posts above.

The link for the original guide: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2006/11/30/how-to-fix-your-itunes-artwork/

To sum up:

For Windows users. You will need an iTunes store account.

1) Select all songs.
2) Right click and Get Info.
3) Tick the checkmark beside the artwork box (Current artwork will be displayed otherwise white)
4) Click OK.
iTunes will now go through each song file and remove embedded artwork.
5) (Optional) Once done, select all songs, go to Advanced tab, click on Get Album Artwork.
iTunes will now add artwork to all 'recognised songs'.

[theone77]

Its very simple for me, i use MEDIAMONKEY for adding media art. so any pics i want to use to show as album art of one music is very easy with this program. Then i just use itunes for adding that music, automatically the album art is already there,

[patientlywaiting]

When I synced Iphone with itunes, I copied my playlist to Iphone. I have all album art in itunes but 2 of the tracks that copied to iphone are missing the art. Does anyone know why the art didn't copy from itunes?
How to do get it on iphone?

[Grumps]

Try these as a source for album artwork! (It retrieves from amazon database)
http://albumart.org/
http://coverhunt.com/

[xMemphisx]

Ok, i have all of my album artwork saved to my computer, specifically, named Folder.jpg, inside the Artist/Album directory. Is there a way to make iTunes pick up and use those automatically instead of fetching from the internet and getting those, and not having to go through album by album and set each cover manually? (I ask, because on my linux machine, amarok goes through and does just exactly that... and it's kind of a pain to switch back to iTunes and not have it).

[wie_getz]

For Amarok users on Ubuntu there is no need to sync with iTunes.
Just follow this guide:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone

Album covers will be transfered too.

If you also want to use iTunes (for Photo Synchronization), install SwapTunes from the installer (Ste Packaging Source). So your music transfered from amarok will not be deleted with the next iTunes sync.

[mansanas]

hello,

Whenever I want to put album art on my recently downloaded/ripped mp3's I use ALBUM COVER ART DOWNLOADER. It is very handy to use, it searches cover arts and you can put them on an entire album or you can put specific picture on each mp3 song, if you like. Then you can sync them on your iphone with itunes.

best regards,;)

[xMemphisx]

For Amarok users on Ubuntu there is no need to sync with iTunes.
Just follow this guide:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone

Album covers will be transfered too.

If you also want to use iTunes (for Photo Synchronization), install SwapTunes from the installer (Ste Packaging Source). So your music transfered from amarok will not be deleted with the next iTunes sync.

+1

If it could be plus 9000, it would be... i have searched and searched and searched trying to get my phone to talk to Ubuntu. You're the man. :D :D :D

[footballfan7469]

omg that way is so hard, dude for the real artwork all for free, go to fix tunes dot com and install that(its self explanitory wat to do) the do all that artwork, then it ill say u can do only 50 hit ok, once u do all 50 exit out of it, uninstall it by hiting (on a pc) start> all programs> then hit fixtunes> uninstall, then all the artwork will still be in itunes, then reinstall fixtunes and just keep doen that its realy easy

[Dimsum]

If you want cover art from a source other than iTunes then I suggest Amazon.com. Just click on the album cover and it opens up in a new window and then save it and tag your files using your chosen music tag editor.

I used to grab all my covers from Amazon and then tag my albums, however I would suggest that its better to get cover art from iTunes because Amazon does their cover art at 500x500 pixels while iTunes covers are 600x600 pixels. The only problem is a cover in Amazon is a jpg file so its around 50-80k in size whereas iTunes covers are saved as bmp files so they are around 1MB in size!

If you are really into your coverart as i am (coverflow is amazing isn't it?) then what I do is grab the cover from iTunes, then click get "get info" on the file and then click to the last tab where the cover art is and then right click and copy. Then simply paste it in some folder and the 1MB bmp file cover will appear. Then simply open it up in a picture editor (ACDSEE for example) and then resave it as a jpg. This will give nearly as good quality and only be 1/10th the file size at around 100k. Once done, simply tag and embed it into your album using whatever tag editor you have (mp3tag freeware is my choice).

[kaman]

albumart.org is also a great source for album art.

Kaman

[S_Warrior]

Most easy way is with iArt, a program that works integrated with iTunes. It uses several sources for artwork and allows you to do a word search when it can not find what you want. Do a Google search for it.

[Chilternburt]

If you want cover art from a source other than iTunes then I suggest Amazon.com. Just click on the album cover and it opens up in a new window and then save it and tag your files using your chosen music tag editor.

I used to grab all my covers from Amazon and then tag my albums, however I would suggest that its better to get cover art from iTunes because Amazon does their cover art at 500x500 pixels while iTunes covers are 600x600 pixels. The only problem is a cover in Amazon is a jpg file so its around 50-80k in size whereas iTunes covers are saved as bmp files so they are around 1MB in size!


umm why not just use Clutter...http://www.sprote.com/clutter/
it connects to Amazon and pulls the 300x300 artwork from the site, or you can drag and drop images in its window to copy to itunes...
it hasnt been updated in ages but works fine...

[SenorFunkyPants]

For some of the more obscure album artwork (often high quality) try:
http://www.discogs.com/
Also very useful if you don't know the name of the album as it can search by song name.

Also Mp3tag is a good tagger..I used Fixtunes for a while but it really messes up the tags putting in multiple field entries if run more than once.

[Dimsum]

umm why not just use Clutter...http://www.sprote.com/clutter/
it connects to Amazon and pulls the 300x300 artwork from the site, or you can drag and drop images in its window to copy to itunes...
it hasnt been updated in ages but works fine...

umm .. if you're going to quote me - at least use the same OS.

My suggestion of using Amazon and simply copying and pasting is something both Windows and Mac users can do as it is web based. Your suggestion of using Clutter is not much point as it is a Mac only program.

[iuk2001]

For those of us who do not live in the US or other country where you can create an iTunes Store Account, there is a simple way to create such account and download the covers from iTunes with just a mouse click.

First of all, go to the iTunes Store, and on the Quick Links section, and select Redeem.

In the next screen, enter the following redeem code A9JYY4LMMJEY. Click on Redeem, and you will get a red-letters warning saying that the Offer has already expired. Don't worry about it, the code is for a free download that expired many months ago.

Go back to the home screen of the iTunes Store, and select Sign in on the upper right corner of the screen. Then choose Create New Account for the US store and follow the on-screen instructions. In the address section, you have to enter a valid city and postcode. Beverly Hills and 90210 will work. Just add any phone number with 310 as the area code.

In the last screen, you can select None as your method of payment, and voila!, you have your account.

You cannot purchase albums because there is no credit card associated to your account, but you can download the free singles of the week and the album art for free.

I had my account created with this method for over a year and works perfectly.

[forme]

For those of us who do not live in the US or other country where you can create an iTunes Store Account, there is a simple way to create such account and download the covers from iTunes with just a mouse click.

First of all, go to the iTunes Store, and on the Quick Links section, and select Redeem.

In the next screen, enter the following redeem code A9JYY4LMMJEY. Click on Redeem, and you will get a red-letters warning saying that the Offer has already expired. Don't worry about it, the code is for a free download that expired many months ago.

Go back to the home screen of the iTunes Store, and select Sign in on the upper right corner of the screen. Then choose Create New Account for the US store and follow the on-screen instructions. In the address section, you have to enter a valid city and postcode. Beverly Hills and 90210 will work. Just add any phone number with 310 as the area code.

In the last screen, you can select None as your method of payment, and voila!, you have your account.

You cannot purchase albums because there is no credit card associated to your account, but you can download the free singles of the week and the album art for free.

I had my account created with this method for over a year and works perfectly.


I follow your instruction but they ask to enter the credit card info. There is no option to select none as your method payment???