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September 29, 2005
Grabbing High-Res Album Art with PHP
Grabbing High-Res Album Art with PHP by David Battino -- The album cover images in iTunes are just 170 pixels square. A programmer figured out how to retrieve 600-pixel versions from Apple's site. Can you figure out how he did it?
Posted by Rico | Permalink | Comments (1)September 23, 2005
JewelCase iTunes CD Cover Design plug-in
Enjoying your music library's cover designs got a little easier, and cooler. with the JewelCase plug-in from Optical Alchemy. It's a iTunes visualization that displays a 3D rotating jewel case and track info for the currently playing song. The front of the rotating jewelcase shows the cd cover art, and the back (traycard) displays the tracks on the cd against a blurred background of the cover design. The artist and cd title are shown in the spine. The jewel case with cover art comes flying in when the song or album changes, based on user settings. JewelCase is 'donationware' and it gets two thumbs up!
The JewelCase cover art visualization plug-in is Macintosh only (sorry PC users).
image from Optical Alchemy webstie ©Optical Alchemy
September 14, 2005
Communication Arts Album Cover Design Feature
Communication Arts, the seminal design publication, has an eight-part online feature about cd and album cover design. The feature describes what has changed and what has stayed the same in the last 50 years of album designs. Major label designers and independent freelancers give their opinions of the creative process in the music industry, and the political tug-of-wars that sometime exist along the way.
A Reptilian CD Design Resource
Toads - they swim, they eat and they make little toads... and they know a lot about cd packaging design. At least Marvin over at Mr Toad's does - he has a web site that is a fantastic source of design tips and strategies to get the best results for cd packaging design projects.
Click here to visit Marvin at Mr Toad's.
Posted by Rico | Permalink
