OS X Tip #23
Now that all the full size iPods all color and can show album art if you have it. I thought it might be a good time to explain how to add album art to your existing iTunes tracks that you ripped from your own CDs (iTunes Music Store purchases have always come with album covers). Well do you get out that scanner and use PhotoShop. No way! As this is an option. I will show you how to save time.

Manual Method
1) Open up iTunes
2) From the Edit menu, select “Show Artwork” or select Library on left side and press “Show Artwork” button at bottom left (forth one from left)

3) Select to the track you want to add the cover art to
4) Go to Amazon, and search for the Album with your browser. Underneath the CD cover picture is a link for a large version of the cover art
5) Drag it the artwork picture (usually a jpeg) from the browser window to the artwork pane in iTunes. Or you can Copy, then Paste artwork by using Control-Click or Edit menu.

You can also add the album art to multiple tracks at once by selecting all the tracks you want to add the artwork to. Select the first track and while holding the Shift key down select the last track and they all should highlight. Then Control-Click on the highlighted tracks and choose Get Info. Click yes on window that asks if you want to edit information to multiple items. Copy, then Paste artwork to artwork pane on window.

EarFloss.com is also a good site to find artwork as they sometimes have both front and back CD artwork. If you cannot find it on Amazon or EarFloss.com, try just doing a Google search and selecting images.

Less Manual Method
Buy Synergy $10. Synergy adds several features to iTunes. It can be set up to find artwork for tracks as they play. Synergy stores this artwork in a folder that can be found in the Home Directory -> Library -> Application Support -> Synergy -> Album Covers. Just copy these album covers to iTunes tracks you desire.

Clutter freeware, is another option. But you still need to copy artwork to iTunes yourself.

Here is a website called Art4iTunes.com that can help.

You can also try Find Album Artwork with Google which is a helpful script.

Here is a Dashboard Widget to fetch album covers for you so you can add them to iTunes:
AlbumArtWidget

Even Less Manual Method
Fetch Art for iTunes – this freeware applescript software can be a nice time saver. Gladly this has been recently updated to work with Tiger after being gone for awhile.

Album Cover Finder $6 offers a somewhat automated way to add album artwork to iTunes,

Need iTunes Help?
Apple iTunes Tutorial

Check out Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes

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