Starting today, my encodes are 128kbps AAC (vbr) on the latest iTunes. When I include album art on all my rips, I seek 500x500 album covers, and have found most at walmart.com and they aren't pixelated or gross to the eye compared to amazon.com cd covers. what do you guys use? For sublime's self-titled album, I had to search google images, find a 700x700 cd cover and resize it in iPhoto to fit 500x500 dimensions.

What are your album art standards, and what are your sources (and/or programs to get this done... only concerned about on a mac if you are going to talk about programs)? Thanks.

Before Apple changed the iTunes Music Store to disallow external sites from pulling the 600x600 images, that's where I'd get them. That loophole has been closed though. Thankfully I got all my album art beforehand.

Buy.com also has 500x500 images in very good quality. You have to use Firefox to get them though.

I typically use Buy.com.

Have you tried this search site?
http://www.slothradio.com/covers/

If you can find the cover you are looking for, some titles are not in their database, http://www.cover-paradies.to/ is a good one.

They usally have for covers, 1024x1024 front and back covers. It ranges a little bit.

Plus, it does not use Amazon.com sources...I think from the looks of it, it uses user uploaded sources.

- Gow