Cover Art: Best image type and size when scanning CD covers?

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Level 1

9 points

Cover Art: Best image type and size when scanning CD covers?

I am in the process of scanning my CD covers for the albums iTunes could not locate, but I can't seem to get the same image quality as some of the covers that iTunes did find. For example, Public Enemy's "Apocalypse '91" (located by iTunes) is very sharp, even when enlarged as much as possible in iTunes. My images, however, are always fuzzier, despite the fact that I'm descreening the art to avoid moiré, scanning at RGB at 600 DPI, and have tried final images that have been 600x600 all the way up to 1500x1500 in size. I've saved files as high-quality JPGs, TIFFs, PICTs and even GIFs, but they all look inferior to some of the suppied covers. Is there a step or a setting (I'm using Photoshop) that may help? I'd like all of my covers to look as sharp as possible.

Thanks for your assistance with this!

Dual 2 GHz G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9) iTunes 7.0, Photoshop CS, Epson scanner

2 GHz G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9) iTunes 7.0, Photoshop CS, Epson scanner

Posted on Oct 1, 2006 2:43 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 1, 2006 4:10 PM in response to 132 BPM

Welcome to Apple Discussions

I don't see any benefit using 600 dpi - 300 ought to be plenty (if you are going to print the art - cd covers etc. or 72 or 96 dpi if it's only for monitor viewing.)

Are you using Photoshop to create the image file? If so, are you initially saving the scanned file as a Photoshop file (final image can be converted to jpg or Tiff)?

How are you installing the art work? Are you drag/drop to the art info panel in iTunes for each song or album?

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Answer 2

132 BPM Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 1, 2006 4:36 PM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

Hi,

You're right about 300 DPI; I was just trying to have enough data to remove the moiré in addition to using Smart Blur to clean things up as much as possible before I shrunk the image down. I've got my 23" Cinema Display set at 1920x1200, and I used Command-Shift-4 to get an accurate idea of how big the cover image would be on my screen when enlarged in iTunes. The image ended up being 760x760, so I made mine 900x900 just to be safe.

I did apply the art using Command-I in iTunes, so if there is a better way I'd love to know.

The reason I'm even going through the trouble of doing all of this is because the day will come (next spring, they say!), when I'll be able to control my Mac using the tentatively named "iTV" and I'll want my images to look great on my (yet to be purchased) HDTV. No one wants to see a crummy JPG thats 40" wide!

Thanks for your ideas!

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Answer 3

Oct 1, 2006 5:04 PM in response to 132 BPM

I would just copy and past the cover art from (eg. amazon) its a lot quicker and you can get some really nice looking cover arts.

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Answer 4

Oct 1, 2006 5:12 PM in response to 132 BPM

I usually position the cover art file on the right side of the desktop, you can drag/drop it into the CoverArt well on the info. panel.

Most of my own cover art is Amazon derived using the Amazon widget. I have no idea how it will appear on the TV, however, I'm sure there will be some image degrading. If TV is your intention, it seems you're on the right track. Strange to me the artwork does not look sharp on your monitor, especially given the high dpi setting and image size.

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Answer 5

132 BPM Author

Level 1

9 points

Oct 2, 2006 7:08 AM in response to Hawaiian_Starman

The images aren't very blurry, just not as sharp as they apparently could be. Perhaps the record labels are supplying Apple with straight digital files of the artwork instead of scans (although I seriously doubt it). 'Tis a mystery...

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. There are better things to spend time on, and I suppose fuzzy album art is not critical in the grand scheme of life. I'll just have to learn to move on...

Thanks again!

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Answer 6

Oct 2, 2006 7:29 AM in response to 132 BPM

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions.

You're welcome. Glad to have helped.

One other thought, some of my early artwork files were manually created via scanning. I had another look at them. I realize now the original images themselves were not the sharpest, reflecting the mediocre quality of the printed image by the mfg. Scanning seems to only magnify this problem - the original images are certainly not 300 dpi. Even with "sharpening" filters, the end result is not as good as a digitized image, hence the somewhat blurry comparison to a more recent image.

It seems if you didn't have the comparison, the scanned image by itself would look "acceptable" to the eye. Once I saw 2 images taken with a wide-angle camera of the same scene. First was a "hand-held" shot, the second from a tripod. First looked quite good until shown side-by-side with the second. All of sudden it looked "blurry". Eye tricks.

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