Sunday 4 September 2005

New Singles

I picked up these two singles today. Both are Australian issues.

The Gorillaz cover is for an Australian limited edition. I suspect that the Jamiroquai cover is one of two, but I don't have any more info on it.

Sunday 4 September 2005

More '80s

As a result of an '80s playlist I've been using on my iPod, I noticed that some of these albums didn't have artwork, so here are two more.

Saturday 3 September 2005

Talking Heads

Here's a flashback for you! In my continuing efforts to update the art in my own collection, I came across these three gems.

Sunday, 7 August 2005

The Emergency

As promised, here are The Emergency's covers. Quite a range of styles here. I love the bold shapes of Sound the Alarm. We Got the Horror has an appropriate gothic tone and The Spectrum Deadly looks like a '60s postcard.

Along with the change in standard as I mentioned below there is a change in aspect ratio with landscape covers. When I originally measured a landscape cover to develop the 460 x 400 standard, I measured a CD single cover. I've only just discovered that this was a mistake because single covers are not as tall as other landscape covers such as digipaks because of the way the cover is cut to fit into the case. I've measured the digipak and a standard jewel case and I've found that the correct aspect ratio is actually 450 x 400.

Sunday, 31 July 2005

Standard Change

From an album-art viewpoint, I'm annoyed that the iTunes Music Store has not been released in Australia because ever since the beginning I've wanted to know what size Apple used for its album art. You can't see album art when you're in the Music Store. It's only been through the advent of the iTunes New Music Tuesday podcast that for the first time I've been able to check this. After all the effort I've expended on a standard size of 400 x 400 pixels, it turns out that Apple mostly uses 600 x 600. Boy was I pissed because I thought they would use 400 x 400 and it opens up the unconfrontable possibility of rescanning everything at a larger size.

When I started scanning I had a 1024 x 768 monitor and 400-pixel artwork almost filled the screen when magnified in iTunes. It was for this reason and in order to keep file sizes reasonable that I went with the 400-pixel standard. I've done a test with 600 x 600 pixels and I loved the quality, especially with thin text characters, but the file sizes went up about 100Kb, which is prohibitive for smaller iPods. Over a number of years I've been through four major standard changes and started to think that the 600-pixel standard might last me only about a year.

My solution to prepare for the future is to raise the standard to 1000 x 1000, which should last many years. In order to cater to small hard drives in the present, I will continue my two-version process where I edit the original uncompressed scan at full resolution, then scale down to the highly workable 400-pixel standard for actual use. From now on, everything will be scanned at 1000 pixels and the only previous scans I will redo will be those of obvious poor quality. It's a lot of work but I'm a slave to quality.

Look for covers by The Emergency in a few days, which will be the first covers to have undergone this process.

Tuesday, 19 July 2005

Green Day Bonanza!

I'm a bit of a completist. Well, a lot of a completist, actually. That's why I bought a bunch of Green Day releases related to the last album. I bought the impressive hardback-book limited-edition version of the album (see second right) and reconstructed the standard cover from the elements.

I was really annoyed with whoever was arrogant enough to decide to print the warning label directly on the cover. This is a pet beef because it's not part of the artwork and I don't care. I edit it out whenever I can but in these cases it was too hard to repair the image around it so they had to stay.

Sunday, 10 July 2005

Unwind on Sunday

If you bought the Sunday Telegraph today, here is the artwork for the free jazz CD that came with it.

Sunday, 3 July 2005

The White Stripes

You think scanning is hard? You're damn right! These babies, as beautiful as they are, were downright nightmares for a retoucher. There were so many speckles that it took me about two hours to clean them up.

They look gorgeous, though, don't they? I haven't bought the album yet, but I'm getting there.

Saturday, 2 July 2005

BRMC

Starting to build up a bit of a momentum here. I've redone all my BRMC albums. Two of them had the Copy Controlled symbol on the front cover. So offensive! Certainly not the artist's vision. So off they come.

Saturday, 2 July 2005

The Vines

I've been updating my own album art. The problem with scanning is that through constant experience and learning, you discover that your earlier work is rubbish. It didn't help that I started my scanning when I had an aging CRT. I've got a beautiful LCD now, so all the crap juts out shockingly.

I've updated my three Vines CDs. The reason they look so good is due to a technique I've developed for myself that I dub CRT: Colour Replacement Therapy. These cartoony-type covers have large areas of solid colour, but they look dirty when scanned due to colour variations in the printing. I use the magic wand tool in Photoshop to select these areas, then I fill them in with a sample colour from the area itself. The result is true solid colour that not only looks good but compresses more efficiently, resulting in better-looking, smaller files.

Saturday, 2 July 2005

Jem

I bought the album some months ago. It was an import. Now it's been released on an Australian label and it's green for some reason. I've got both for you here, plus the single They.

Thursday, 9 June 2005

Coldplay

For Coldplay early-adopters, here are the covers for not only the album but also the first single. Be stunned at the clarity. That's geometric art and optimised GIFs for you!

Sunday, 5 June 2005

Sunday Sounds

For those of you who live in Sydney and have bought the Sun-Herald Sunday Sounds CDs from last Sunday and today, here are the covers.