As I go through this massive CD and LP digitization project, I don’t want to add cover art to any album that’s smaller than 800px. For those albums that don’t have their cover art retrieved automatically, I search Google images for it.
Incredibly frustrated that it’s so rare to find artwork at a reasonable resolution. The vast majority is at 400px or smaller, and I consider myself lucky to find anything at even 640px. Which forces me to put those discs into the “scan” pile, where I’ll generate 1000px album covers (and yes, I’ll share them with the intertubes later).
The question is, why?
Surely, everyone out there scanning or photographing LP or CD art isn’t scanning the originals that small. And hopefully they’re not adding them to their collections or putting them on web sites that small. Is there some kind of blocking going on that I should know about? This seems crazy.
Perhaps ppl just want a basic cover for use with personal devices, where the small screen just is not worth the extra work. If/when you do get cover art ready, a great site is http://www.albumartexchange.com .
I’m sure you’re right, but it saddens me that people are so short-sighted! Sure you’re playing on your iPod today, but tomorrow you could be displaying these images on your TV, or even using the iPad remote, which can easily take advantage of 1000px artwork (and makes smaller sizes look horrible).
Thanks for the tip on albumartexchange. I’m seeing a lot of glitches with the site, but the idea is great – hope they’re able to work out the kinks.