How do I "remove" artwork from iTunes?

Well seeing as I see many posts unanswered and not being a tech at itunes yet, I have a couple of ideas you can try.
I think to remove the artwork from songs you can just uncheck the artwork box in the Get Info box you get by right-clicking on songs in itunes.
Seeing as to upload artwork for more than one file at the same time you select as many tracks as you want and then double-click on the artwork box in the Get info window, you may be able to select all the songs in itunes and then uncheck the artwork box and accomplish what you want.
As for the ipod, maybe you have to remove the artwork in the same way I explained, but while browsing the ipod with itunes. So you hook up the ipod to the pc and wait for itunes to access its content, and then select all the tracks in the ipod and remove the artwork.
Let me know if that's what you've already tried to do, would be nice if I could help someone 🙂

*Rebuild artwork cache*
Sometimes the artwork cache becomes corrupt and fails to show correct artwork, even when this is properly set up in iTunes *or holds out of date preview images!*. To rebuild the artwork cache, connect your iPod to iTunes. Locate the iPod in the Sources pane on the left-hand side, then select the Music tab. Remove the tick from *Display album artwork on your iPod*, sync the iPod, reselect the option & sync again.

tt2

How do you sync the ipod? Doesn't the syncing begin automatically as soon as you plug it in?

There's a button on the Summary tab. My personal preference is also to *Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods* on the *Preferences > Devices* tab so that I can make changes to my syncing options before the process starts.

tt2

Frustration: this is decidedly an interesting post. I suspect patience will be required as we all work to narrow things and rule out what it is not. I would not be so hasty to delete the itunes library +en masse+ just yet. You wrote:

{quote} I successfully removed him from the albums but cannot for the life of me remove him as a display picture on my iPod nor can I remove him from iTunes altogether! {quote}

Is it possible non-album art photos are being imported to your iPod? Try this: connect your ipod to synch with your computer. After it comes up in the iTunes source (left) pane, then, in the right main pane, find the photo tab and select it. See if anything is checked to synch (or not) and report back.

Delete the Album Artwork folder inside the iTunes folder.

tt2

What model ipod is this?

See if there's anything in this 'ipod photo Cache' folder.
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1314
Since you restored your ipod, I doubt that is theproblem.


I did some looking around, and I agree with tt2 - delete the Album Artwork folder. Since you've already gotten rid of all cover art, it won't matter. Eject your ipod. Close itunes. Then go delete the folder. Then clear the recycle bin. Restart itunes, sync your ipod, and it should be gone.


The default location on XP is
C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\Album Artwork



On Vista, it is
C:\Users\[your username]\Music\iTunes\Album Artwork

Ahh - if you do have photos on your ipod, maybe that is it.
What directory holds these photos on your PC?



I think you posted that you restored the ipod to factory settings and the unwanted photo was gone.
Why not restore it again and only sync your music - does the photo still show up?

Let's have another go...

Any audio file in your iTunes library has the potential to hold one or more pieces of artwork. This includes items classed as Music, Podcasts or Audiobooks. Every image in these files has the potential to show in the iPod preview panel.

Your options are to delete every piece of art from every file or systematiclly clean only those tracks that contain the offending image.

The first option is simple - select all tracks in Music with CTRL-A, "Get Info" with CTRL-G, select the Info tab, place a check mark in the box next to the Artwork square and click OK. This will remove all artwork from every track. Repeat for Podcasts & Audiobooks.

If there is artwork you'd like to keep then do the same thing, but selecting only albums with the problem image. The potential drawback with this approach would be that it could be possible for the image to survive embedded in a tag as one of multiple images. Depending on the build of iTunes it shows either the first of the last of any group of multiple images and for each album normally the shows art from the first track that has it. This leave pleny of scope for hidden copies. Setting the artwork panel to show the selected item and scanning track by track testing for multiple images may prove rather time consuming.

Once you are certain that all art has been removed from all tags it might still be worth deleting the iTunes artwork cache as I briefly alluded to earlier. This cache is stored in a folder called *Album Artwork*, usually in the same place as your iTunes Library files.

Katrina has already mentioned that the usual locaion for Vista is C:\Users\[your username]\Music\iTunes\Album Artwork. If it's not there use *Edit > Preferences > Advanced* tab to work out where your music folder is. Album Artwork will typically be in the same folder as the one containing the iTunes Music folder. If you still can't find it use the Windows Find/Search tools to find all folder calleds Album Artwork on your computer.

Moving onto the iPod and rebuilding the artwork cache on that. Connect your iPod to iTunes. Locate the iPod in the Sources pane on the left-hand side, then select the Music tab. Remove the tick from Display album artwork on your iPod, sync the iPod, reselect the option & sync again. If this doesn't work then restoring the iPod should.

Best of luck,

tt2