Managing Artwork
UPDATED: Restore Artwork from Album Folder v2.1
Restore Artwork from Album Folder v2.1 will look for an image file in the parent folder of each selected track's filepresumably its "Album" folderand apply the data from that image file as artwork for the track.
This latest version addresses an issue whereby the script stalls when no image file is found and logs folders without image file to Console.
Artwork Bug in iTunes 10.4 Lion, continued
Regarding this note about a possible artwork bug with iTunes 10.4: There are a couple of responses to a query I made about it at Macintouch. It seems like the image data will "travel" with a file, but simply will not display as a file's Finder icon in Lion.
Artwork Bug in iTunes 10.4 Lion?
I hadn't had time to do much research on this because my head's been in other projects, but after some tests this morning it really looks like there is a bug with adding new artwork to tracks in iTunes 10.4 running under Lion. Perhaps this is old news for some. I've been getting various email reports of this, but no one ever has the same story, which makes it difficult to piece things together. The problem seems to be: while new artwork will display in iTunes, it does not travel with the file (eg, when copying to another Home Shared iTunes) nor does the Finder icon of the track's file display the artwork. Seems like the image data isn't being written to the file. Doesn't seem to be a problem with iTunes 10.4 in Snow Leopard, though. There's no homemade fix that I am aware of so we'll have to wait to see if Apple does something about it.
NEW: Re-Embed Artwork
I got suspicious when I received a few emails reporting that the popular Embed Artwork script wasn't working in Lion. At first I presumed it was because iTunes wasn't aware that artwork had been downloaded, which the script detects from a track's downloaded property. But it appears that it just doesn't work in Lion.
So, I wrote Re-Embed Artwork, which sort of does the same thing by going the long way around: it exports the image data from a track with artwork as a file and then re-imports it. The image data then appears as the icon for the track's file.
This particular script is a Cocoa-AppleScript applet that can only run in 10.6 and 10.7, but you'll only need to use it in 10.7.
UPDATED: Restore Artwork from Album Folder v2.0
Restore Artwork from Album Folder v2.0 will look for an image file in the parent folder of each selected track's file--presumably its "Album" folder--and apply the data from that image file as artwork for the track.
Requires iTunes 10.3 or better. This latest version is a Cocoa-AppleScript applet for OS X 10.6 and 10.7 only. The previous version is available at the script's entry page.
Bevy of Updates
I've just updated the last batch of scripts most recently posted to account for iTunes' full-screen mode in Lion. My good friend Kirk McElhearn is a devoted iTunes-in-full-screen-mode user and he describes the situation so elegantly that you might as well read about it at his site.
The latest scripts re-posted with quick updates are: Super Remove Dead Tracks v3.1, Remove n Characters From Front or Back v4.1, Save Album Art to Album Folder v4.1, Save Album Art as folder.jpg v2.1, and Re-Apply Downsized Artwork v2.1.
So, if you picked any of those up in the past couple of days, you may want to re-up to the latest versions.
UPDATED: Re-Apply Downsized Artwork
Re-Apply Downsized Artwork v2.0 will examine the display artwork of each selected track and if greater than a user-set default size (n x n) will resample the image to that default size. Artwork already at the default size or smaller will not be affected.
This latest version is written as a Cocoa-AppleScript Applet for OS X 10.6 and 10.7 only. It has an improved progress indicator and is generally faster.
UPDATED: Save Album Art as folder.jpg v2.0
Save Album Art as folder.jpg v2.0 will export the artwork of the selected tracks or tracks in the selected playlist as a JPEG image file named folder.jpg to the folder which contains each selected track's file--presumably the track's Album folder. Many third-party music players and systems (Sonos, for example) may look for a "folder.jpg" file here to use as display artwork.
This latest version is written as a Cocoa-AppleScript Applet and can only run on OS X 10.6 and 10.7 systems (the previous universal version is available from the script's entry page). It consolidates all settings into a single preferences pane.
UPDATED: Save Album Art to Album Folder v4.0
Save Album Art to Album Folder v4.0 is a script that will export the artwork data of the selected tracks or tracks in the selected playlist as an image file to the folder which contains each selected track's filepresumably the track's Album folderor a specific user-selected folder. Additionally, you can customize various settings for the image file:
This latest version is a Cocoa-AppleScript Applet, so it can only be run on OS X 10.6 and 10.7.
Artwork-Related Scripting Bug Follow-Up
Not long ago I posted about a possible bug introduced with iTunes 10.2 regarding reading PICT file data for use as track artwork (Possible Artwork-Related Scripting Bug in iTunes 10.2?). Essentially, a tried-and-true AppleScript routine for importing PICT image data fails in iTunes 10.2. After some investigation, it turns out that iTunes 10.2 now uses ImageIO for all image handling instead of QuickTime and the ImageIO framework no longer supports PICT files. No one should really be surprised since the PICT format has largely been deprecated. But even so, until recently, PICT was still supported in iTunes.
So it's not a bug but a side effect of modernity.
The fix for iTunes 10.2 and above is to simply read in the data from a PNG or JPEG file:
tell application "iTunes" to set data of artwork 1 of theTrack to (read (file targetImageFile) as picture)
Where theTrack is a reference to a file track in iTunes and targetImageFile is the path to a valid PNG or JPEG image file.
A couple of my scripts that need the fix will be posted later today.