Optimum Resolution & Size of Album Art

I'm scanning in some of my album art for iTunes and have found that it looks fine in all cases except when displayed in Front Row while playing a track. Imported art does not have this problem. I've scanned in the images at 600 dpi and saved as a standard JPEG. The image displayed while playing a track is very grainy. I'm not sure if I need a higher resolution or should save in a different format. The TIFF format has the same problem. Any help would be appreciated.

I found a solution. There may be other ways to do it, but this creates album art in a small file size that looks good in iTunes, Front Row, and Apple TV on a large HDTV.
I scan the CD album art using a Canon all-in-one printer set at 600dpi. I save this file as a standard quality JPEG and believe me, it's large. I then open the saved JPEG using Preview and select Adjust Size (can't remember which menu item that's under). I change it to 600 pixels/inch allowing the other dimension to change proportionately. I then do a save as to another file and adjust the quality of the saved file to about 50-60K. The resulting image looks good in all the applications and is a small footprint.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I tried them all and this method gave me the results I was looking for. I hope this helps someone else.
Mark

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Optimum pixel size for album artwork?

When I search for artwork I see very many different sizes available such as, 50x50, 400x400, etc. What is the optimum size to use in iTunes when the artwork will be displayed on an iPod, an iPhone, and an iPad? If I understand correctly, iTunes will resize the artwork to display properly on the devices, but I was wondering if I should look for a "standard" size to add to iTunes that will still look correct whether it is on an iPod or an iPad.

Of course it also depends upon how much space you have on your drive, and how much space on a player if you add them to mp3s or whatever. Perhaps not a huge difference but if you start adding 500k image files to 20,000 tracks then it does add up to a GB or two.

Album art size in 5800 music player

I am experimenting with album art in MP3's on my 5800.
It seems as though the displayed size of album art while the track is playing varies with the size of the original jpeg attached into the mp3 file. Anybody else find this or a solution?
For example if I use the 600x600 pixels art downloaded from the iTunes music store, the pictures come out tiny on the 5800 but if I change them to 500x500 in size then they come up a lot bigger.
Furthermore if I go to a track which is displaying tiny artwork when I play it, in the Music Library and select it and choose Album art in the menu, the artwork comes up a lot bigger, filling the screen !!!! So the 5800 can resize the artwork to fill the screen but then screws up the resizing when you play the track. Very annoying.
I am using v20 firmware. Not sure whether this is an issue in previous firmware versions.

I figured it out, look here http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82694

Resolution of album arts associated with audio files - downscaled?

The iPod can display album art with a maximum resolution of 240 by 240 pixels. What happens if a picture file of higher resolution is associated with some audio tracks?
Is it being downscaled and then, with far less space required, transfered to the device?
And another question unrelated to the one above: I saw the font size changing between audio files, although their file name or description isn't longer than the ones being displayed regularly. Is this a bug?
Is there a way to change the font size? It'd be very handy since titles of tracks that are longer than the screen can display, it's a mess to wait until it scrolled all the way through...
Thanks!
Message was edited by: dr. orange

Hello dr. orange,
And welcome to Apple Discussions!
Is it being downscaled and then, with far less space required, transfered to the device?
That is correct. During the syncing process, a smaller scaled down version of each track's artwork is created and then transferred to the iPod.
I'm not entirely sure about the font size issue you are seeing, but there is no way to adjust this on the Nano.
If you wish to, you can provide feedback to Apple on it through this link.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodnano.html
Hope this helps.
B-rock

What's the best resolution for album art?

I have encountered some 500x500 album art images that don't fill the album art box, and some 200x200 album art image that do completely fill the box. So I assume that there's more to importing album art than just pixel counts.
That leaves pixel density, or resolution. What should the proper resolution be for a 500x500 pixel album art image? Anything else I'm missing?
Thanks. WeedMonkey

72 pixels per inch is usually the default and I find this works reasonably well, although if you want high-detailed covers I'd go for something like 144 or even 200PPI. I get all of my album art from www.7digital.com and save the 350x350 images. I find they are just the right size for Cover Flow and on my iPod.

Album art resolution

What is the best album art resolution?
Screen is 320x240, but in menu iPod shows album art a bit larger - which size is used for this preview?

The best ones I've found on the internet when importing into Photoshop are 500 X 500 Pixals. So, I've made that my standard and they fit well when cropped to that size. I'm not sure how they will look some day if you can use your TV to show them along with listening. Although I have Comcast, Audio and most of the Covers shown on TV are terrible anyhow. I am an artist an am particular as you, but this concept will never be as good as a printed album cover of the past. I've just excepted it as a quick visual to help ID your album.
Tom

Can you vary the Album Art Size on the iPod?

I would like to know if you can change the size of the album art. It currently shows a small picture of the album. I would like to have the album cover most of the screen. Please advise.

While a song is playing, click the select (center) button twice.
This should display the album art full-screen.
Cheers!
-Bryan

Is there and optimum photo size and resolution for use on the ipad?

Is there an optimum photo size physical and resolution for use on the Ipad.

It depends on whether you want to zoom in the image. If you don't, pre-converting them to the native screen resolution of your iPad 2, 1024*768 (assuming 4:3 aspect ratio, as is the case with most Point and shoot (but not DSLR, which, generally, use 3:2!)) will make sureyou use the least storage and will always have the fastest file transfer.
If zooming is important and you have pictures over 16 Mpixels you want to fully zoom in, then, you'll need to use third-party apps like Photo Manager Pro (review: http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/all-one-photo-viewer-roundup-70-price-drop-bes t-image-viewer ), which doesn't downsize your pics and doesn't use much more storage than it should.
Let me know if you have further questions.

Album art - increase size on display?

I've just started using the Nano and I've been enjoying it tremendousl. One of the huge benefits of this device over my old players is the ability to display album art. However, the size is really small. I understand that it will be small when it is displaying song information alongside of it. But when you scroll to where it only displays the album art, it doesn't cover the entire screen, the way a photo is displayed. Is there a way to increase the size of the album art so that it does show across the entire screen?

Not sure if I have the same problem or not. My album art work shows up fine on the i-pod and in the small "now playing" window on the lower left of my pc but the main view window shows that "Itunes is unabke to browse album covers on this computer". I was always able to view this for as long as I have had the i-pod in the past before but now cant. On my PC (I tunes)the "Cover flow view" is selected and no matter what preference is selected the same message comes up and can not see album art work anymore on main window above song list.

How to properly embed album art work into TV/Films itunes: home sharing lag

My setup is a simple apple home sharing network.
I have a mac mini running OS X 10.6.8 and itunes 11.0.4(4) it hosts a lot of music, DVD's that have been re-encoded and paid for content from itunes.
The mac mini is conntected to the network over a very good gigbit lan and has 4 apple TV3 (latest gen) hanging off the network, and multiple PC/Mac/ipod/ipad devices hanging off the network.
I connect to the itunes home sharing service with the apple TV service using the "remote" application on the ipad.
When I select Music/Albums TV Shows or Films from the menu of the itunes library the album art work loads (quickly) over the grey boxes as I scroll down. However this takes a few seconds for each "scroll" I do on the ipad (it has thousands of items in there).
The exception to the rule is any paid content, when I open Music/TV/Films menu on the ipad the paid content (especially for TV and Films) the artwork is already there, and doesn't have to load it.
How is the artwork for paid content contained differently than the artwork for content I've manually put into the itunes library.
If I look at the itunes library locally on the machine hosting the itunes data, the artwork is there straightaway, no loading, pull up the items info with "get info" and click on art work, the artwork is there, and I can see no different in the art work settings for paid content or for content I've manually updated/loaded an image for.
So why/how does the paid for content have artwork on the ipad the exact second I open it over the network, yet the non-paid for content take a few seconds per screen to load it.
Is there something different in how the art work is embeeded, or is it a caching setting ? whats the difference.

Dang You Autocorrect.
You don't saw what size and resolution the embedded artwork is. This could be part of the issue. Artwork on movies you purchase from the iTunes Store is 667x1000 at 72 DPI so if yours is larger than this is could be causing the delay.

Adding scanned art for Album Art

I followed the itunes help on this topic and checked out some of the previous threads about album art with no real solutions to my problem:
I am using iTunes 7 and my brother just recorded an indie album which I added to my iTunes library. I then scanned the CD cover and made two copies:
a .psd file of 250x249 pixels
a .jpg file of 250x249 pixels
The iTunes Help says to command-click each item in the album, choose "Get Info" and then drag and drop the art into the little artwork box in the window. That kind of works. The file appears in the little window, but when I close the "Get Info" window on those items, the album art is not there. I also tried Browsing to the file with the same results. I tried both the JPG and the PSD file.
I also tried dragging the file from my desktop onto a single file and that won't "stick" at all. If I have a single song selected and try to drag the file from the desktop to the album art viewer, it won't go at all. It just "bounces" back to its spot on the desktop.
Is there a certain file type or size? I am the administrator of the computer. I tried things like ejecting the CD before dropping the art work on and I tried changing the iTunes view from the new "album art carousel" look to the standard iTunes view.
What could be wrong? Thanks!

Welcome to Apple Discussions.
There really is no standard file size, however, "less is plenty" applies. Jpeg is sufficient, and since it's basically for screen resolution on either the monitor or iPod, then the file sizes you mention are more than sufficient.
Odd, the artwork is not sticking. I usually copy/paste into the Artwork panel for a single selection. Multiple selections are similar to what you tried - drag/drop to the artwork panel, which automatically checks the box to the left of the panel. Upon selecting OK, iTunes updates the album or multiple selections (usually taking 20 seconds or so).
Might try moving the com.apple.iTunes.plist file in your User Library>Preferences folder to the desktop and restarting iTunes. You may have a corrupted preference file. On the restart, iTunes creates a new preference file. See if the artwork functionality is restored. If not, return the file to its original location. If the artwork placement does work, then you'll need to restore any custom iTunes preferences.
Post back with results.

Cover flow and Album Art Peculiarities

Ordinarily when I import an album into iTunes, all the songs on the CD are consolidated under a single album cover reducing the number of instances of art in Cover flow. As iTunes plays down through the list of songs, the same album cover is displayed in Cover flow. I can also see the next album in the que on either side of the album currently playing.
Lately though, I'm seeing an instance of album art for each song on an album. For example, if there are twelve songs on the album, there will be twelve instances of the album art work in Cover flow.
I have looked carefully at the song/album information to ensure it is consistent for each song on the album and it all appears to be same so I've just about given up.
I like to scan in my own CD covers to get the highest resolution artwork possible (generally 175k in size) and because it can be very time consuming, I no longer ask iTunes to search for album art.
I select the entire list of songs in the album and perform a Get Info and drop the artwork onto the Art well and Cover flow will react in one of two ways; it either consolidates all songs under a single piece of art or it will display the art for each song on the album!
What am I doing wrong?
G4 Dual Mirrored Door

For the instances where you are getting multiple album art showing in Cover Flow, are those songs from a compilation album? If the artist name isn't exactly the same for each song, iTunes will list them individually. You will have to: identify them as a compilation or alter the tag info or use the Sorting option to group them together.
Diane Wordsmith

Photos: optimum file size for storage

I have a few questions about what is the best way to manage my photos.
Do I need to put my photos into my iTunes library before I can get them onto my ipod? There is no category called photos, so I'm not quite sure where they will go.
Will the file size be compressed before synching it to the ipod so that only the pixels required for the small screen resolution will be kept, or will photos remain in their full original size, limiting how many I can store?
If it goes on as the full original file,
a) will I be able to connect my ipod to photo kiosks to get prints?
b) what are the minimum dimensions and dpi that will show nicely on the screen so I can manually convert them myself before adding to my library?
I also have a question about album art. I've been able to set my own personal art (eg. family photos) to albums, but I'm not sure if it works for individual songs. As I understand it, these images are compressed and made part of the ID3 tags. Does this take up a significant portion of available memory?

Ian Parkinson wrote:
You don't add your photos to iTunes at all, it does not actually show them in iTunes like it does music.
You can't prepare for the photos transfer before you get the iPod as you will only see the photo setting once the iPod is connected.
Once the iPod is connected there is a new tab in iTunes that lets you select the photos you wan to put on the iPod, basically it lets you select a folder.
I suggest you read the manual here, it explains it all :-
http://manuals.apple.com/manualsList?config=W4N&model=iPodtouchManuals
Ian
Thanks. I didn't realize there was no way to prepare the photos, because it's certainly taken me a long time to prepare the music.
I've been reading the manual, and it does not explain those questions I asked.
+If you’ve set up photo syncing, iTunes automatically copies or updates your photo library (or selected albums) from your computer to iPod touch whenever you connect iPod touch to your computer. iTunes can sync your photos from the following applications:+
+Â On a PC: Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 or later or Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0+
+or later+
+For information about syncing iPod touch with photos and other information on your computer, see “Getting Music, Videos, and Other Content onto iPod touch” on page 5.+
+(Page 7)+
+You can sync photos from Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 or later or Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 or later on a PC. You can also sync photos from any folder on your computer that contains images.+
It doesn't explain how it's done. How will I tell it which file to grab the photos from? There are four different locations where I am storing photos, and I only want to use one. It also does not mention whether the photos will remain in original format and whether they'll be readable at photo kiosks.
I hope that when I get the ipod it will be more clear.
Thanks for you help.
Any other advice?
Message was edited by: guava1973

CAn't sync album art to iPhone 3GS ver3.0, why?!?!

I tried to sync songs which have album art to the iPhone 3.0 by using iTunes 9, but some can, while some can't. Anyone would like to tell me the reason? All album art I downloaded from google. Picture type are JPEG. Is it because of the resolution or something like that? Please help!!! Thanks so much!!!

Thanks^^ but some of my songs didn't appear on iTunes, since some are Korean, Japan, and Chinese songs :o( so I need to download their album cover from Google. Is it because of the picture's resolution or size?

How to ensure album art data does not downsample in WALKMAN on Xperia ZR phone?

I'm using Xperia ZR (model C5503) with android 4.2.2 and WALKMAN v7.9.A.0.1
All my music have an album art image of around 600x600 to 640x640 resolution.
When I play a song, WALKMAN shows the original albumart very clearly as normal, but when I go back to this played song later or any other song that shares the same album art, the album art is clearly downsampled, is blurry and filled with compression artifacts.
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How do I stop this from happening?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I understand you are having issues using Walkman app on your Xperia phone. However, Sony Mobile has a separate community which can be found here.
If my post answers your question, please click on "Accept as Solution"

Optimum Resolution & Size of Album Art

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