Topic: Best source for Cover Art (Read 4711 times)

Dave T · « **on:** December 04, 2005, 01:27:38 pm »

I'm in the process of cleaning up my library. I'd like to re-download cover art. What's the best place to get the highest resolution Cover Art images? I'd like to get the highest resolution available, searching through sites in order of the cover art resolution. Is this what MC does? I tried searching on this, and didn't see a clear answer to this question.

Thanks!

- Dave

JustinChase · « **Reply #1 on:** December 04, 2005, 01:43:58 pm »

I'm actually doing the same thing right now.

Here's where I'm looking, in order...

Walmart - if they have it, it's 500 x 500

Next I look at Buy.com - clicking the thumb shows the full size image, but to download it you need to right click in the thumb, select properties, and highlight the http of the actual image. for example, this is listed as the address...

javascript:largeIM('http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/779/60146779.jpg');hide('ppForm')

and you only want this part...

http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/779/60146779.jpg

paste it in the address window, hit enter and you'll get their 500 x 500 image

Next is Amazon, they're pretty hit and miss, usually 300 x 300 at best,

Next is discogs.com; they're great for trance/house/ambient/whatever, but they also have a lot of mainstream stuff too. Takes a bit of digging to find large art, but they have quite a bit.

yahoo image search comes next at http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images/advanced takes you to the advanced search, and I look for large images, then medium if there are no others

I've done some google searches for some wierd stuff, but what I have above gives me most of what I'm looking for.

I'm always looking for other good art sites, so if you know any, lets have em...

Dave T · « **Reply #2 on:** December 04, 2005, 01:48:21 pm »

Thanks, Justin!

Sounds like good spots to find the cover art, but it sounds like you're doing it manually (?). I've got over 500 full albums in my collection - no way I want to do that manually. What's the best automated way to get the cover art into MC?

- Dave

JustinChase · « **Reply #3 on:** December 04, 2005, 01:56:00 pm »

King Saprta had a cover art finder plug in, but it seems to have been removed from his site. It worked pretty good, but still filled in the wrong covers from time to time. i'm sure how that can be avioded. I found it was easier for me to do it manually, than try to correct the wrong ones (since i had to review everything to find the errors), and to fill in all the non-mainstream discs.

It takes forever, but I have not found a better solution. YADB is the proprietary database of J River, and while it's decent, it certianly doesn't have everything.

Maybe there's a better way, but I haven't found it yet.

JimH · « **Reply #4 on:** December 04, 2005, 01:59:32 pm »

Try MC Help on this, but select all tracks, right click, image, get from Internet, loose match.

datdude · « **Reply #5 on:** December 04, 2005, 02:17:53 pm »

Try this: http://tpemble.urfbownd.net/itunes/itunes-art.php

If you have itunes, simply go the store and copy the url of any album art. Their images are 600x600 which is about as high res as you can get!

KingSparta · « **Reply #6 on:** December 04, 2005, 03:05:04 pm »

Quote

King Saprta had a cover art finder plug in, but it seems to have been removed from his site.

I am Working On A New One.

Mastiff · « **Reply #7 on:** December 04, 2005, 03:30:37 pm »

datdude, I get most of my cover art in XGA or even higher. I could tell you where, but then RIAA would have to kill me... (If you get my drift.)

JustinChase · « **Reply #8 on:** December 04, 2005, 03:40:34 pm »

Quote from: KingSparta on December 04, 2005, 03:05:04 pm

I am Working On A New One.

Excellent news! Will we be able to pick locations to look, and how loose we would like to be? Any other cool features in the works?

Quote from: Mastiff on December 04, 2005, 03:30:37 pm

datdude, I get most of my cover art in XGA or even higher. I could tell you where, but then RIAA would have to kill me... (If you get my drift.)

I don't, but I wish I did. Any more you can share?

KingSparta · « **Reply #9 on:** December 04, 2005, 04:43:58 pm »

Images Of My Cover Art Finder 3 Plug-in Is Located Here

http://www.spartasoftware.com/MC-Plugins/index.html

GHammer · « **Reply #10 on:** December 04, 2005, 05:35:28 pm »

KingSparta's plugin (if available) is great.

JustinChase · « **Reply #11 on:** December 04, 2005, 05:59:59 pm »

Quote from: KingSparta on December 04, 2005, 04:43:58 pm

Images Of My Cover Art Finder 3 Plug-in Is Located Here

http://www.spartasoftware.com/MC-Plugins/index.html

Looks good King. Looks like there's quite a bit more customizing available than the last version.

Any ETA yet?

KingSparta · « **Reply #12 on:** December 04, 2005, 06:02:52 pm »

Quote

Any ETA yet?

Soon

ForsakenArdor · « **Reply #13 on:** December 04, 2005, 06:31:08 pm »

I find that the best way to get cover art is to scan it yourself. I use Google image search, which is good at finding a lot of images. You just need to use quotes when you need them. Like, for Ben Folds' album Songs For Silverman, you would put this in the blank:
"Ben Folds" "Songs For Silverman"

But some, I just couldn't find a large enough image. Just do a Google image search for "blow it out your ass it's veruca salt" (with the quotes) and you'll find tiny images, some with poor scan quality. So, I just stuck the art in my scanner, increased the resolution big enough so I could apply the glossy paper filter (so reflection doesn't mess up the colors), then crop and shrink it to about 500 X 500. Look at the image I made of it myself. I challenge anyone to find a better scan on the web. I get that it's a chore if you have 500 albums, but I would just do it myself if I can't find it anywhere.

Dave T · « **Reply #14 on:** December 04, 2005, 09:02:28 pm »

Guess I'll wait for Sparta's plugin like everyone else. I'm really surprised that someone else hasn't already done this - with all the public domain code out there for managing mp3's. To have a program that would selectively go through all the sites that have cover art, looking for the highest resolution art available, isn't rocket science.

cncb · « **Reply #15 on:** December 04, 2005, 10:03:15 pm »

Quote from: ForsakenArdor on December 04, 2005, 06:31:08 pm

I find that the best way to get cover art is to scan it yourself.

This is the conclusion that I came to as well. It takes a while if you do them all at once but then you have perfect images that are guaranteed to be the correct ones.

datdude · « **Reply #16 on:** December 04, 2005, 10:16:08 pm »

Quote from: Mastiff on December 04, 2005, 03:30:37 pm

datdude, I get most of my cover art in XGA or even higher. I could tell you where, but then RIAA would have to kill me... (If you get my drift.)

You work for a distributor?

Mastiff · « **Reply #17 on:** December 05, 2005, 02:47:15 am »

JustinChase, "share" is the operative word here... I don't think the rules of this board will allow me to be more specific.

Dave T · « **Reply #18 on:** December 05, 2005, 02:03:29 pm »

I started the "Best source for cover art" thread, and see it's been locked. Why?

JimH · « **Reply #19 on:** December 05, 2005, 02:05:42 pm »

It was straying into areas that are potential legal problems for us.

modelmaker · « **Reply #20 on:** December 05, 2005, 04:28:19 pm »

I have been doing it manually since I first started with MC 3 or 4 years ago. I now have around +/- 4500 albums in the mC db all with cover art. If you do a few each day, eventually you'll get them done.

I'm with justincase as far as sources go. I also use amazon.uk and amazon.de as well.

I use the free irfanview (www.irfanview.com) to resize the images to 900x900 to view full screen on my TV. I find the resized images to be sharp and clear on both my monitor and TV. I would not start with anything smaller than 300x300 as a source image.

compwiz32 · « **Reply #21 on:** March 05, 2006, 08:19:42 am »

I use a search plugin for Firefox that works great. How's how I do it..

Step 1 - D/L the download the "Search Plugin Hacks" Extension. This extension allows you to add custom search engines to Firefox

Step 2 - Goto mycroft.mozdev.org and use the advanced search (there will be a list of all search engine plugins)

Step 3 - Add "CD Cover Art" Search engine
*** Note there are many audio related great search engines there***

Step 4 - After plugin is installed - just change the search engine in Firefox windows and type in name of album

I find the cover art about 95% of the time. I think it searches amazon and a few others. If your comfortable with Firefox than you can do all for steps in about 5 minutes and be on your way to findng all the cover art you need.

KingSparta · « **Reply #22 on:** March 05, 2006, 03:58:17 pm »

I forgot to mention my free cover art finder plug-in is available now

www.spartasoftware.com

datdude · « **Reply #23 on:** March 05, 2006, 05:39:32 pm »

Hey King,

You think you could make a plugin that grabs random artist photos off the net, kinda like the beta version of MC 11.1 did?

But have it integrate with the playing now slide show plugin where it saves the photos into the artist/art folder.

Pink Waters · « **Reply #24 on:** March 05, 2006, 06:20:39 pm »

For me, I used the Amazon.com coverarts, because they are the same size (with a very few exceptions)

babaostyle · « **Reply #25 on:** March 05, 2006, 07:44:47 pm »

This is the easiest and best I've found

http://kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/

will dl from wal-mart, amazon, buy, and yahoo manual or batch.

KingSparta · « **Reply #26 on:** March 06, 2006, 05:41:06 am »

neat little program if you don't mind doing it manualy

I used some test files and compaired the results to mine

my plug-in rendered bigger images with less work.

mine is also faster.

INTERACT FORUM

Author Topic: Best source for Cover Art (Read 4711 times)

compwiz32