How to Scan Album Art
The digital music revolution is leading fans of music to purchase more and more of their albums online in the form of downloaded MP3 files. Album artwork is included with downloaded music purchased online, but owners of CDs and records can also fairly easily digitize the album artwork from their music collections with the use of a scanner or digital camera. Once the art is digitized, it can be used as icons for social networking, art to accompany ads on eBay or Amazon or as additional content attached to an MP3 file and viewed on a media player like an iPod. Learning how to scan album art is easy.
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Instructions
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Scanning CD album art
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Connect your scanner to your computer. Usually this is done using a USB cable, but refer to your owner's manual or the scanner for details.
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Place the CD album art you would like to scan on the scanning glass, then gently close the lid of the scanner to press the CD album art flat.
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Scan the CD album art at 300 DPI if you would like to make a hard copy print, or at 72 DPI if you plan to only view this art on a computer or media player. Make sure your scanner is set to scan at full color at 100 percent of its original size. Refer to the owner's manual or your scanner for more information on setting your scanner preferences.
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Save the CD album art scan as a JPEG image file and give it a name that will be easy to remember, such as BeatlesHits. The file can now be used to print out hard copies for your own use or as a graphci for use online.
Scanning record album art
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Spread a white towel on a flat surface, like a table, and position an album cover on top of it.
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Natural light is best to use for photos, so preparing your photo shoot near a large window is preferred. If that's not possible, the light from a bright white bulb should suffice. Refrain from using a flash, as the colors of the album art could be washed out by glare.
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Position your digital camera directly over the album cover art, making sure you are not creating any shadows in the process. Set the resolution of your camera to the highest setting for best image quality. Get close enough for the album art to fill as much of the frame of your photograph as possible, and pay close attention to the focus to ensure clarity. Take several photos of each album cover you would like to capture just in case one or more shots is blurry or obscured by glare.
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Connect your digital camera to your computer. This is usually done with a cable provided by the manufacturer, so refer to the owner's manual for your camera for details.
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Transfer the album art photos from your camera to your hard drive, then open them up in a photo-editing program like Photoshop. From there, you can resize the photos, correct colors, adjust focus and change the resolution of the file to 72 DPI if you would like to display the album art on a web page.
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Tips & Warnings
Make sure you save the photos to your hard drive as soon as can to prevent unexpected loss or misplacement.
Making copies of copyrighted work and distributing them or representing them as your own is illegal. However, making scans of album art from records and CDs in your own collection is covered under Fair Use rules.
