‘Get Album Artwork’ for individual track in 12.4

[Jolin Warren]

I frequently want to download iTunes store artwork for an individual track. This has always been easy – right-click on the track and choose ‘Get Album Artwork’. However, this command seems to have disappeared in iTunes 12.4. There is a command in the File > Library menu to Get Album Artwork for the whole library, but this isn’t what I want. Does anyone know what happened to this functionality and whether it’s still possible in 12.4 (possibly with an AppleScript)?

[kirkmc]

I don't know why this has been removed. And you don't want to do it for the entire library, because that can replace artwork for files where you've added your own artwork.

[Jolin Warren]

Unfortunately I misunderstood the command (thought it had just been moved) and so ran it, only after realising it was going through my whole library. Hopefully no big losses, though I've saved artwork scans I've done separately if I come across anything.

 

I guess I'll submit feedback to Apple, this is an irritating loss!

[Jon_Eric]

I have used Ben Dodson's iTunes Artwork Finder to get the "iTunes" artwork for albums in the past.

[Jolin Warren]

Thanks Jon, that's extremely helpful. Many years ago, there was a similar service that allowed you to search for and download iTunes artwork. At some point and update to the iTunes Store broke it, and then Apple added the 'Download Album Artwork' feature to iTunes, and I started using that. Great to see a more expansive service for searching the iTunes Store. Plus, it can be easier for me than even the iTunes feature as my metadata often doesn't quite match with what iTunes uses (particularly for classical music and musicals), so a direct search saves a lot of fiddling about with tags in iTunes.

 

However, I think I have also rediscovered a way to download artwork for selected tracks only from within iTunes! Just by chance I was looking at sort options and found the following:

 

1. Create a playlist containing the track(s) you want to download album art for.
   
2. When viewing the playlist, go to the View menu and choose View As > Songs[ATTACH=full]103[/ATTACH]
   
3. Now click on the Album by Artist column header to sort by Album.
   
4. If you now click on the same column header, you get a pop-up menu. From here you can choose Get Album Artwork and it will just download artwork for the tracks in the playlist!
   

[ATTACH=full]104[/ATTACH]

 

This should work in other views too where you can View As > Songs. But for downloading artwork for just a few tracks, a playlist is probably most useful.

 

Thanks again for the iTunes Artwork Finder website. That will be really useful as well (for my DVDs too!).

[Jon_Eric]

Good tip Jolin! I was playing around with your method and found a couple more places where it works. In the Artists view, right click on the album name and it will be at the bottom of the menu. Also in the Albums view, right click where the album art should be and it will be at the bottom of the menu.

[kirkmc]

Actually, it works any time you select an album:

 

How to Get Album Artwork in iTunes 12.4

[Jolin Warren]

Great detective work Jon! That's much easier than my create a playlist method.

 

Thanks Kirk for exploring further and writing it up. I guess the new method makes some sort of sense and it certainly declutters the contextual menus. I just wish I'd known about this change before accidentally running the command on my whole library!

 

One thing that does seem to be missing is the previous contextual menu command to remove downloaded artwork. After I download the artwork, I copy it and embed it in the tracks themselves so the artwork ‘travels’ with them; previously I would then remove the downloaded artwork for neatnesses sake. Anyone seen this? Not a big deal if not.

 

Overall, I have to say that I really like 12.4. The interface is a lot more consistent, the new behaviour of the back button (and ‘cmd-[’) is incredibly useful, and there is good attention to small details like when switching from album to song view, the album you were viewing is selected in the song list (previous versions would dump you at the top of the song list).

[pbGuy]

Here's an easy, albeit pedestrian way to import either a single song or an album artwork...

 

Use Google Images and search for the name of the CD (I've never really searched solely by a song name; I'm sure one can for very popular songs).

 

Usually, the results offer a variety of JPEG-artwork resolution sizes and some with better clarity than others. I'll look for a good 300x300 JPEG (or, 500x500 I'll reduce to 300x300) and download it to my desktop; I then, use GraphicConverter to make any resolution changes.

 

Be careful the artwork doesn't have a watermark, as some do. But, if the artwork appears as a downloadable JPEG, I believe it's Ok to download (meaning, no copyright infringement) from what appears to be a bone fide, web source (I do scrutinize the web address from which the JPEG is being downloaded).

 

Subsequently, do a Cmd+I (Get Info) on the song or the album (in iTunes), go to the Artwork tab and complete a drag & drop (copy - paste) of the downloaded artwork to this Artwork tab and click OK to Save the new artwork. Done. [Note: saving artwork to 1 song, within an album, saves the artwork only to that song. If the objective is to save to all songs, then, do the Get Info on the album.]

 

One caveat regarding Album artwork... I've noticed when ripping albums to my iTunes Music Library that sometimes the song artwork is not consistent even within the Album if iTunes recognized the CD and auto downloaded the album artwork. ...So, doing the above routine will save good artwork consistently to all songs within the Album.

 

I don't know the optimal resolution for artwork (for iTunes and Apple TV 4 viewing). [Kirk, please comment.] But, I find the 300x300 resolution works well judging by viewing the artwork via ATV4 Home Sharing on an HDTV.

 

I've been doing the above for some time now, and I'm pleased with improvements I've made to my Library's album artwork. This manner of importing gives one more control of the end result.

[kirkmc]

Apple has always used 600x600, so they scale everything for that to be optimal.

[Jon_Eric]

pbGuy - I agree! images.google.com is a great resource. Another one I have used in the past is album art exchange.

[Jolin Warren]

I have certainly used Google images when an album isn't on iTunes, but I find that if the artwork is on iTunes it is much quicker and produces high quality results (there can be a certain amount of hunting around using Google images). As you say, pbGuy, it is worth embedding the artwork in the files themselves, so that adds an extra step when using the iTunes Get Album Artwork.

 

Thanks, Jon_Eric, for the link to album art exchange – that looks like a useful resource.

[Jolin Warren]

Hmmm, I can't get past the front page of album art exchange, I'm told that my region is blocked. A bit of digging seems to indicate that the whole of the UK is blocked!

 

<http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/problem-www-albumartexchange-com-and-www-blocked-com-18335/>

<http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=18389&page=16>

 

☹️

[Jon_Eric]

I'm terribly sorry. I had no idea.

[pbGuy]

Apple has always used 600x600...

 

Thank you for the advisory.

 

Wow, I'm surprised my 300x300 versions of artwork show as good as they do in comparison to albums I've purchased from iTunes, where I've not edited the artwork (and is 600x600). ...I really can't tell the difference when viewing through my ATV4.

 

Anyway, I'll now look for good 600x600 versions (say, from Album Artwork Exchange), since Google Images seldom has artwork above 500x500, when I'm importing my ripped CDs

[kevinridolfi]

I discovered a few weeks ago that the iTunes Store has artwork available at 1400x1400 pixels. Previously: 170x170, 250x250, 400x400, 450x450 and 600x600. The new size will print at hi-res at 4.75" (the size of a CD cover). It will also display better on a TV. My method for getting all artwork (so as not to rely on the sometimes iffy "Get Album Artwork") is to find the exact album in the iTunes Store, click the options arrow next to the album price, copy link, paste link into browser, right-click on the album artwork image, open image in new tab, modify the size at the end of the resulting URL from 170x170 to one of the larger sizes I previous mentioned. Seems like a lot of work, but it goes much faster than it took me to type this. And I don't have to worry about iTunes pulling the wrong album art.

[kirkmc]

I've done that for years, but I didn't know that they had a lot of artwork at 1400. I recall having found some years ago, but not much.

 

I just looked at the artwork for a few albums. Some looks upscaled, and some looks native at 1400. Thanks for pointing that out. (Though I won't be using artwork that big; it takes up too much space.)