Adding album art in iTunes

For many, album art is an important part of a complete music experience.  Songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store come with album art automatically, but tracks acquired from other means (downloading, importing CDs) do not.  Thankfully, it’s easy to add album art to these tracks in iTunes.

Adding Album Art:

First, make sure that your Album Art area is visible in iTunes.  This is the small square area in the bottom left of your main iTunes window.  If it is not visible, press the fourth button from the left in the bottom left corner.

Next, select the song (or multiple songs, as we did for tagging) that you’d like to add album art to.  I’ll select the album “Obrigado Brazil” by Yo-Yo Ma.

There are several different methods we can now use to add the album art into iTunes. 

1. If you have a scanned image as a file on your hard drive, simply drag it into the Album Art area from Windows Explorer (PC) or the Finder (Mac).
2. If you do not have the image on your computer, search for it on the internet.  I use www.amazon.com for my Album Art.  On Amazon, search for the album you’d like, and click on “see larger picture” for a suitable image file.

   *Note that if you are acquiring your images from the web, you do NOT need to save the image to your hard disk.  Simply drag the image from your web browser into the iTunes Album Art area.
   

   
   
   

   If you do not wish to add album art using the drag-and-drop method, you may do the following to add album art from a pop-up file browser window. 

   1. Right-click (command-click on the Mac) on a track (or tracks) and select “Get Info.” 
   2. Open the “Artwork” tab. 
   3. Click the “Add…” button.

      Enjoy your Album Art!

      Notes and Tips:

   4. You can view the album art at full resolution by clicking on it once in the Album Art area.
      You can choose to either view the album art for the “Selected Song” or the song that is “Now Playing.”  To toggle between them, click the bar above the Album Art area in the bottom left corner of iTunes.
   5. When using the iTunes Visualization features, Album Art is displayed along with the Song, Album, and Artist information.
   6. Multiple album art files can be stored on any one track.  To add another image file, simply drag it on top of the existing one.  In the bar above the album art will appear arrows which allow you to switch images.
   7. If Amazon does not have the Album Art you need, try www.walmart.com or www.allmusic.com

      Jerrod H.