Posted Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Print Your Own Artwork on an iTunes 4.5 Jewel Case

As I described last week, the new printing features in iTunes 4.5 let you print gorgeous jewel cases, complete with album art from the songs in your iTunes library.

But what if you want to print your own art? That perfect playlist that you enjoyed on your Hawaii vacation -- wouldn't its jewel case look great with a photo of your favorite beach?

Here's another excerpt from my brand-new The Macintosh iLife '04 that explains how to do it.

First, add the custom art to one of the songs in your playlist: select the song, choose Get info from the File menu, and click the Artwork button. Drag the art into the artwork area. (If you're using a photo from iPhoto, just drag the photo from the iPhoto window into the artwork area.)

Next, be sure your custom art is the leftmost image in the artwork area -- drag it there if necessary. Click OK when you're done.

Now navigate to the playlist and select the song to which you just added the art. Choose Print from the File menu, click the CD Jewel Case Insert button, then choose the Single Cover theme.



Keep in mind that iTunes stores song art in the song file itself, which means your custom art will cause the song to use more disk space on your Mac and iPod. When you've printed your jewel case insert, you might want to return to the Song Info dialog box to delete the custom artwork.

Me-commerce department. There's so much more about iTunes 4.5 and the rest of the iLife '04 family in my book, The Macintosh iLife '04. Almost 300 full-color pages, every one of them updated for iLife '04. A two-hour instructional DVD that dovetails with the book and also contains GarageBand loops, sample projects, and utilities and plug-ins for all five iLife programs. All for a price that even the author thinks is too low: $20.99 at Amazon.com.