Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Technology Lesson: How to Load Album Art In iTunes

 Apple's art for artless albums in iTunes.

Most of Apple's iPod had visual displays (and touch screens). These screens allow users to scroll through albums by viewing album art, and display album art while individual songs play. (A user can also scroll through albums in iTunes).

Unfortunately, iTunes won't always import art with each album upload. Here's how to force iTunes to import album artwork.

1. Turn on your computer, log in if necessary, and start iTunes.


2. Click ADVANCED.



3. Click GET ALBUM ART WORK.


4. iTunes will ask you to confirm this decision. iTunes will also include a disclaimer about its search.

5. Let iTunes do its thing. It will let you know when it's completed its search. How long this takes depends on the size of your library and artless media. The above image is what you'll see when iTunes is done. It's possible that some of your music won't have artwork available via iTunes. (We'll discuss how to import artwork manually in an upcoming album.) Click OK to complete the artwork search.

If you want to know which albums did not have available artwork, click the arrow at the bottom of the dialogue box.

If you want to view artwork in iTunes, click the arrow at the bottom of the left column. It's the last icon, next to your shuffle and continuous play buttons. The arrow will allow a box to slide up and down. This is what it looks like without artwork:


And this is what it looks like when artwork is available. Note that I've selected the song "Merry Happy" by Kate Nash, and iTunes is displaying the artwork for her album Made of Bricks:


See how easy that was?!

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