Step 1: Try getting album art automatically
The most recent versions of iTunes have a built-in feature that will automatically try and match your music collection with album artwork. This feature is seldom 100 percent effective, but it will get you closer to your goal. To use it, open up iTunes and immediately go to the Advanced menu and select "Get Album Artwork." iTunes will now compare your music library against its online album art database and see if it can find any matches. Depending on how much music you have, this step could take a few minutes.
The most recent versions of iTunes have a built-in feature that will automatically try and match your music collection with album artwork. This feature is seldom 100 percent effective, but it will get you closer to your goal. To use it, open up iTunes and immediately go to the Advanced menu and select "Get Album Artwork." iTunes will now compare your music library against its online album art database and see if it can find any matches. Depending on how much music you have, this step could take a few minutes.
Step 2: Filling in the gaps
After completing the first step, iTunes has hopefully matched most of your music collection with artwork. Unfortunately, once you get hooked on seeing your music in Cover Flow, it's tough to tolerate missing artwork for even a single album. So let's find the stragglers.
After completing the first step, iTunes has hopefully matched most of your music collection with artwork. Unfortunately, once you get hooked on seeing your music in Cover Flow, it's tough to tolerate missing artwork for even a single album. So let's find the stragglers.
First, select your music library and switch your iTunes view to the second of the three options (option one is a list view, option three is Cover Flow, and option two is a compromise between the two). This view allows you to see a list of your music alongside any cover artwork that is attached to it. It's not as gee-whiz as Cover Flow, but it's much more practical for this job. At this point you should be able to scroll though your list and see which songs have cover artwork and which ones don't. If all of your songs have artwork, then congratulations--just sync your iPhone and eject it.
If you've found a song or album that is still missing cover artwork, iTunes gives you multiple ways to remedy the problem. One of the easiest methods is to make sure your iTunes Now Playing pane is open in the lowerleft corner of the application. If you don't see this square, you can go to the View menu and select "View Artwork," or you can click on the rightmost of the four buttons found on the lower-left corner of the application window (the button that looks like a triangle with a square around it).
If you've found a song or album that is still missing cover artwork, iTunes gives you multiple ways to remedy the problem. One of the easiest methods is to make sure your iTunes Now Playing pane is open in the lowerleft corner of the application. If you don't see this square, you can go to the View menu and select "View Artwork," or you can click on the rightmost of the four buttons found on the lower-left corner of the application window (the button that looks like a triangle with a square around it).
If a track is playing that currently has album artwork, then the Now Playing pane will display the artwork like it does in the above picture. If the track does not have any artwork associated with it, then iTunes will give you the option of dragging and dropping the artwork directly into the Now Playing pane (see picture below).
Another option is to right-click on the song that needs artwork and select "Get Info." You'll see a pop-up window filled with multiple tabs of information about this song. The last tab is marked "Artwork" and it allows you to drag and drop image files into the window and even resize the image.
Yet a third option is to select multiple songs (all the songs in an album, for instance) and apply one artwork image to multiple songs at once. To accomplish this, select multiple songs by holding down the shift key, then right-click to select "Get Info." You should see a Multiple Item Information window, with a big square on the right side for album artwork. Again, just drag and drop artwork right onto the box, then hit OK.
Step 3: Finding artwork online
More often than not, I've been able to find all my missing artwork by doing a basic Google Image search. If Google is stumped, try searching on Discogs.com. If your monitor can accommodate running iTunes and your Web browser side by side (see picture below), you can actually drag and drop artwork straight from the browser and into the iTunes Now Playing pane without having to mess with saving files to your desktop. If you've got some odd audio in your library (home recordings, voice memos, digitized mix tapes), you can have a lot of fun finding images online to stand in for cover art.
Step 4: Sync and eject
Connect your iPhone (or iPod) to your computer and sync it to your new, visually stunning music library. Enjoy.
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