July 30, 2007
Make a Poster From Freed iTunes Album Art
Once your covers are free from iTunes, there are may possibilities for creating and displaying something that represents your music library. How about a poster? There are probably many programs that can do something similar, but I've got Photoshop and it's got Contact Sheet, which is just one solution.
In Photoshop go to File>Automate>Contact Sheet. Once Contact Sheet loads, point the source to the folder that Album Art Extractor created, then choose your document size, number of rows and colums, and whether you want any spacing between the covers. Click OK and watch it go. IMPORTANT: You'll want to use Album Art Extractor to create a folder without thumbnails before using Contact Sheet, or else the thumbs will be on your poster too. Also, leave "Flatten All Layers" unchecked in Contact Sheet and you'll be able to set a background color and tweak any covers that don't line up perfectly. Contact Sheet won't force the covers into a perfect square, so some tweaking may be necessary. As mentioned, there are probably other programs tailor-made for this kind of thing, but this is an easy technique for Photoshop users. Contact Sheet has been a part of Photoshop since way before there was a Creative Suite, so even old PS versions should have it.
The quality of the poster will be only as good as the original cover art images in your iTunes. You may find higher resolution covers of your favorites and more at albumart.org.
So free your cover art files from the grip of iTunes' format. Then mash 'em up, script something, print something. I'm off to make a desktop wallpaper and maybe a cover design for a mix cd.
