Hello,

iTunes has the wonderful feature of scanning my Library and automatically adding artwork to my music. However, sometimes iTunes is unable to a) locate in the iTunes Store database music that I have in my Library, and b) match songs that are in both my Library and iTunes Store even though the songs are tagged identically.

I am aware that a few revisions back Apple modified how artwork is handled in iTunes, and that the find-&-add artwork feature does not actually embed the image within the song file, but references a folder containing the artwork image. I am also aware that when I add an image myself to a song, that it is embedded within the file. I am a fan of the large, beautiful, high quality coverart, but I do not wish to add heavy images to my song files.

1. Is there a way for me to manually add high quality artwork to the same folder that iTunes stores artwork within, and then reference that artwork for song files that iTunes was unable to automatically add artwork to?

Also, while I appreciate iTunes providing large image files for cover art, and that the artwork is carried over to iPods, I have noticed that because the artwork is not embedded within the song files, there are limitations. The major limitation is that third party applications like Simplify Media and MytunesRSS are not able to pull the artwork data from the iTunes database.

2. Is it possible for me to have iTunes reference the high quality artwork image file while using Apple related products, but also imbed a lower quality image file within the song?

Thanks for reading!