How do I manually import cover art into iTunes?

I always look up the album cover image (I use amazon for most searches, I find that the image size on amazon usually works best for pasting into iTunes) and copy the picture. Then go into iTunes, select the appropriate album, right click and select Get info. From there you will see the artwork section, and all you have to do is paste.

If you just select the songs you want to manually cover art for, find the picture, you can drag and drop to the lower left box where it normally displays picture.

1. Select all of the songs for a particular album.
2. Get Info on them (File > Get Info, or Ctrl-I, or ⌘-I)
3. The Multiple Item Info dialog pops up… note the Artwork field.
4. Drag and drop the image into the Artwork field (on a Mac) or copy and paste the image (Windows or Mac).
5. Click OK to close the dialog and enjoy album artwork goodness.

You can automate the process for large numbers of files with a program called TuneUp Companion.

Found it. Thanks everyone!

As a follow-on question – why can’t iTunes find the information on line for so many of my discs? Windows Media Player can find a lot of it that iTunes can’t.

I manually paste them in even if iTunes finds the cover art. Otherwise the image is stored separately from the mp3.

MediaMonkey is the most often mentioned Windows tool to automate the process.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/

@IchtheosaurusRex why can’t iTunes find the information on line for so many of my discs?

I always assumed that it finds only music that also exists in the iTunes store.

@jaytkay – well, that sucks. You mean iTunes doesn’t carry The Beatles or Zappa? FYI, I’m not using iTunes to rip music. I use CDex for that. I got an iPod for Christmas, and iTunes is the only way to get music onto it. I like the player – iTunes not so much. Maybe it will be less annoying when I get used to it.

@IchtheosaurusRex, where’ve you been? The speculation about the Beatles catalog coming to the iTunes Store have been discussed for years. And they’re still not there. :-\

@IchtheosaurusRex You mean iTunes doesn’t carry The Beatles or Zappa?

Beatles, no and let’s see ... ... some Zappa, but it looks like a bunch of “Beat the Boots” bootlegs gone legal.

I can name one Zappa album, Weasels Ripped My Flesh, and neither iTunes or Amazon has a downloadable version.

@robmandu , where I have been, up until recently, is in the non-iPod world. Somebody gave me one for Christmas, and I have been tinkering with it for the last week or so. I was trying to establish the cause of iTunes being able to find some of my cover art, but not all of it. The working hypothesis is that they’ll only download cover art from catalogs they sell.

The “working hypothesis” is the correct answer.

From the iTunes Help:

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Here are ways to add artwork to songs:

- To add artwork to one item, select an item in your iTunes library and drag the art file file to the artwork viewer. (You can also copy and paste.)

- To add artwork to multiple items, select an item, choose File > Get Info, and click Artwork.

- To add art to the selected item, click Add (or drag the art file from your desktop to the artwork box). Click Next to add artwork to the next item.

- To add the same artwork to multiple items, hold down the Command key as you click each item, choose File > Get Info, click Artwork, and drag the art file to the artwork box.

- To add more than one piece of art to a song, drag more than one image to the same artwork box.

- To retrieve album artwork for songs in your library, select the songs and choose Advanced > Get Album Artwork. The song must be available in the iTunes Store.

- To have iTunes automatically download album artwork when you import a CD or add songs with missing artwork, choose Edit > Preferences, click Store, and select “Automatically download missing album artwork.”

BTW, if there are any Beatles songs you don’t already have on CD and that you wish to download electronically, Amazon can likely meet that need at 89¢ per song. The Amazon MP3 Downloader application will even automatically insert the new downloads direct into iTunes for you, album art and all… no extra steps.

Like music downloaded from the iTunes Store, Amazon’s MP3 files do not have any digital rights management shackles on them. However, the MP3 format is inferior in quality to the AAC open standard employed by iTunes.

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Me? I usually buy the cheapest thing. I can’t tell the difference between MP3 and AAC with teensie little headphones whilst running miles at 6am in the cold and wind anyway.

@robmandu , my singular source of digital music is my CD collection. No way in hell will I ever pay for a music download unless they stop making discs altogether. I might rip some of my classical discs to AAC to see if I can hear a difference, though.