How do I copy artwork to iPod just once for an album, not for every track?

Question

I don't download music. All my music is ripped from CDs that I own.
After I rip a CD, choosing "Get Album Artwork" from the Advanced menu normally works, and if not, I find the highest quality image I can from the web, and copy & paste that into the large box at the bottom left of iTunes.
It appears that iTunes stores the artwork image once for each track, not once for an album, so for example if an album has 10 tracks, the image is stored 10 times somewhere on my hard drive. This is inefficient, but not problematic.
However, when I (manually) select & drag-copy the resulting 10 tracks to my iPod, the artwork doesn't transfer along with the tracks. I then have to copy the artwork & having selected all the tracks on the iPod, paste it in. I have the "Manually manage music and videos" option selected, as I simply don't trust the automatic system. I want to supervise what is copied, when, and in what way. I don't necessarily want everything in my iTunes library on my iPod.
What concerns me is that for each album, the artwork image is stored repeatedly for each track on the iPod, like on my hard drive, not once for an album. As space will be at a premium on the iPod once I start copying more & more of my CDs across (I have only done 9 so far) the point will come where a large number of MB of space will be wasted on the iPod with duplicate artwork, which will mean that I'll be able to fit far fewer CDs on the iPod than would otherwise have been the case. The fact that I have chosen 192 kbps and the AAC Encoder for all my CD ripping also means that the iPod will fill up faster than if I'd used the standard 128 kbps and MP3 settings. I'm not prepared to go below 192 kbps though. My soon to be purchased Sennheiser CX500 earphones deserve that much!
Is there any way to force iTunes and the iPod to store the artwork only once for each album, and if there is, can this method be retrofitted to the CDs I've already copied to my iPod, or do I have to start again from scratch? I've already filled 670 MB with the 9 CDs, many of which are only 40 or 45 minutes long, so I'm already getting worried!
Alternatively, am I simply mistaken about all this? Does it only *look like* the artwork is duplicated, whereas it's actually only being stored only once?
Many thanks.

Answer 1

In reply to PT:
Why don't you paste the artwork to the track in iTunes first (fast) THEN send them over to your iPod?
I already do that. Every track has the correct artwork in place before I copy it to the iPod.
I ripped about another 10 albums yesterday. Most of the albums got their artwork automatically from the iTunes store. For a few I had to get artwork from the internet.
When I rip a CD, one of 3 different things happens:
1. The album get its artwork automatically from the iTunes store, and then when I shift-click all the tracks and drag them to the iPod icon, all the artwork transfers along with the tracks.
2. As per 1, except the artwork doesn't transfer when I copy the tracks to the iPod. I then copy the artwork from one of the tracks on the Mac, then shift-click all the equivalent tracks on the iPod, and right-click in the large box at the bottom left of the screen, and click on paste.
3. The iTunes store has no artwork for the album, so I copy the artwork from an image on the internet, shift-click all the tracks on the Mac, and right-click in the large box at the bottom left of the screen, and click on paste. I then shift-click all the tracks and drag them to the iPod icon. They all copy across, but the artwork never does, so I then shift-click all the tracks on the iPod and right-click in the large box at the bottom left of the screen, and click on paste.
Pasting the artwork to the tracks, in either scenario 2 or 3 above, takes ages (often longer than copying the tracks themselves) and a progress bar appears, listing each track in order as the artwork is added to the track, accompanied by the spinning beach ball. The slowness is mostly down to using USB 1.1, but for a 20 track album, it appears that the iPod is storing the artwork 20 times, once for each track, not just once in total (for the album).
It appears that in scenario 1 though, the iPod is only storing the artwork once.
In reply to Landon Dial:
well first you go to one track, right click and press get info. you go to where it says artwork, right click the image and press copy, then you exiit out of that. then you can press ctrl and select each song you want to have that artwork. if there highlighted then its working. then right click again and press get info. then go to artwork and press paste and it should have copied the image to all of your tracks
Thanks for your input, but you've completely misunderstood my question. I know how to add artwork to tracks. What I'm trying to figure out is how to force iTunes/the iPod to only store artwork once for each album, not once for each track, even if the artwork comes manually from me finding it on the internet, not automatically via the iTunes store.
In reply to Chris CA:
When iTunes gets the artwork, there is only one copy on your computer.
That single artwork is linked with iTunes to each song on the same album.
When you add artwork yourself, it is copied directly into the ID3 artwork tag for each song. If you have a 200kB artwork file, each song will be 200kB larger.
From what you say it sounds like there's no way to force the issue then. If you have to paste in artwork yourself, then it's one copy per track, not one per album. A serious flaw which I hope Apple will address!
Using playlists is very easy to manage what goes onto your iPod.
That's true, but I don't really have any need for playlists. I want 95% of what's in my iTunes library copied across (complete albums, with artwork). It's the remaining 5% (the odd individual track, amusing audio files, and other odds & sods) that I don't want copied. Copying things manually suits me fine, and I wouldn't consider another method unless it solved the problem that this topic is about!