Add Album Art To iTunes With Ease

09/23/2006

Being the resident geek around here, I often get asked questions about how to do things. Among those things that I get asked about is adding album art to iTunes. While to some people this may be a mind boggling task, I have broken it down to make this task simple. This tutorial is for finding album art on Google, but There are many places to find album art on the web. All of them work along the same basic method, the only difference being how you actually locate the album art on the web.

Step 1 - Search For Your Album Art



Depending on the artist, finding the album art may be incredibly easy such as if you are trying to locate artwork for a popular artist, or very hard if you are trying to locate artwork for a very obscure artist.

The two best places to find album are Amazon.com and Google. When doing a search for album art, I generally use Soople, which is a glorified Google search, but it allows you to get more obscure and exact searches without having to remember the special Google search commands.

Step 2 - Select The Album Artwork That Best Suits Your Album



Your next step will be to select the picture that best suits you album. If one is available, choose a picture that is roughly 500 x 500 pixels. This will generally give you the sharpest picture with the smallest file size. If artwork that size is not available, then choose another one. As a general rule, I like to choose pictures that are about 300 x 300 pixels or above. Smaller pictures will work, but when they are being displayed in iTunes, they will either have white space around them or they may turn out pixilated. When you have decided on a picture that you think best suits your album, click the picture and follow the link.

Step 3 - Follow The Link To The Full-Size Image



At the very top of the browser will be the Google Images logo, a thumbnail of the album art, and a link to the full-size image. Follow the link to the full-size image. It will be much quicker than trying to find the image in its original context.


Step 4 - Right Click, Save Image



After the image has loaded, right click on it and save it. The text for this will vary by browser. In Firefox this text is Save Image As. In Internet Explorer, this text will be Save Picture As.

Step 5 - Choose A Location To Save The Image To



Using the browsing box that comes up, choose a location to save your artwork to that you can easily find. By default Firefox will save to your desktop. I have a dedicated folder for all my album art that I will save my album art to. Make sure before you click save that you choose a file name that describes the album art. That will make it easier for you to find the picture. I generally use the scheme of the artist then the album name.

Step 6 - Select Your Music To Add Album Art To



In iTunes, select the songs you want to add your album art to. To select multiple songs, hold down the Shift key and select the first and last songs on the album. This should select all the songs between Track 1 and the final track. Then Right Click on the selected songs and select Get Info.

Step 7 - Go To The Location Of Your Album Art



Go to the location of your album art and single left click on your image that you wish to add to your music.

Step 8 - Drag The Image To iTunes



After selecting your image, hold down the left mouse button and drag the image into iTunes to the small white box that is labeled Artwork. The release the left mouse button.

Step 9 - Click Okay To Finish



If you did it correctly, the album art will display in the Artwork box and there will be a check mark next to it. Click OK to finish.

Step 10 - Verify The Album Art



While this step is not required, I recommend it. iTunes has a bad habit of not always accepting the album artwork on all the songs. So verifying that all the songs have the album art attached will save you some head scratching later on. To verify, click the Now Playing bar above the album artwork and make it change to Selected Item. The click through all the songs you just added album art to. If one of the songs does not have the album artwork attached to it, simply redo steps 6-9. Remember, you can add album art to individual songs as well, so it is not always necessary to select all the songs on your album when adding artwork.

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