Adding Artwork for Songs in iPod

You might want to associate artwork with a song. For example, if a song doesn’t have album art associated with it, you can add the art yourself. Or, you might want to add the artist’s picture or some other meaningful graphic to the song. You can add one or more pieces of art to songs by using the following steps:

1. Prepare the artwork you are going to associate with a song. You can use graphics in the usual formats, such as JPG, TIFF, GIF, and so on.
2. Select the song with which you want to associate the artwork.
3. Open the Info window and then click the Artwork tab. If the selected song has artwork with it, you will see it in the Artwork pane. You can add multiple images for the same song. You can use the slider under the image box to change the size of the previews you see in the window. Drag the slider to the right to make the image larger or to the left to make it smaller. This doesn’t change the image; instead, it only impacts the size of the image as you currently see it in the Info window. This is especially useful when you associate lots of images with a song because you can see them all at the same time.
4. Click Add. A dialog box that enables you to choose an image will appear.
5. Move to and select the image you want to associate with the song.
6. Click Open (Windows) or Choose (Mac). The image will be added to the window.
7. Continue adding images to the Artwork pane until you have added all the images for a song. The default image for a song is the one on the left of the image box.
8. To change the order of the images, drag them in the image box.
9. Click OK. The window will close and the images will be saved with the song.

Viewing Album Artwork in iPod

To view a song’s artwork, do one of the following:
■ Click the Artwork button located under the Source list. The Artwork pane will appear and display the artwork associated with either the currently playing song or the currently selected song. At the top of the artwork, you will see Selected Song, which indicates you are viewing the artwork associated with the selected song, or Now Playing, which indicates you are viewing artwork associated with the song currently playing.
■ Double-click the artwork to see a larger version in a separate window. The title of the window will be the name of the song the artwork is associated with.
■ To choose between viewing artwork associated with the selected song or the song currently playing, click the text at the top of the Artwork pane. The artwork will change to the other option (for example, if you click Playing, it will become Selected Song), and you will see the artwork for that song.
■ If you choose the Now Playing option, the artwork will change in the Artwork pane as the next song begins playing (unless, of course, the songs use the same artwork).
■ If the song has more than one piece of artwork associated with it, click the arrows that appear at the top of the pane to see each piece of art.

Ratings Songs in the Content Pane

You can also rate songs in the Content pane. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Scroll in the Content pane until you see the My Rating column.
2. Select the song you want to rate. Dots will appear in the My Rating column for that song.
3. Click the dot representing the number of stars you want to give the song. The dots up to and including the one on which you clicked will become stars.

Configuring Song Options in the Info Window

You can configure a song’s options in the Info window by performing the following steps:

1. Select the song whose options you want to set.
2. Open the Info window.
3. Click the Options tab
4. To change the song’s relative volume, drag the Volume Adjustment slider to the left to make the song quieter or to the right to make it louder.
5. To rate the song, click the dot representing the number of stars you want to give the song in the My Rating field. For example, to give the song three stars, click the center (third) dot. Stars will appear up to the point at which you click. In other words, before you click you’ll see a dot. After you click a dot, it becomes a star.
6. To set a start time, check the Start Time check box and enter a time in the format minutes:seconds. When you play the song, it will start playing at the time you enter. When you set a start or stop time, you don’t change the song file in any way. You can play the whole song again by unchecking the Start Time or Stop Time check box.
7. To set a stop time, check the Stop Time check box and enter a time in the format minutes:seconds. When you play the song, it will stop playing at the time you enter.
8. Click OK. The window will close and your changes will be saved.

Configuring a Song’s Options

You can configure a number of options for the songs in your Library, including the following:
■ Relative Volume—You can change a song’s relative volume so that it is either louder or quieter than “normal.” This is useful if you like to listen to songs that are recorded at a variety of volume levels so that the volume remains somewhat similar as you move from song to song.
■ Equalizer Preset—You can use the iTunes Equalizer to configure the relative volume of sound frequencies.
■ My Rating—You can give tunes a rating from one to five stars. You can use ratings in various ways, such as to create criteria for playlists (such as include only my five-star songs) or to sort the Content pane.
■ Start and Stop Time—You can set songs to start or stop at certain points in the track. This can be useful if you don’t want to hear all of a track, such as when a song has an introduction that you don’t want to hear each time the song plays.

Labeling a Song in the Content Pane

You can also edit tags within the Content pane:
1. Click once on a song to select it.
2. Click once on the tag you want to edit. The tag will become highlighted to show that it is ready to be edited (see Figure)
3. Type the new information.
4. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac). The changes you made will be saved.

Labeling Multiple Songs at the Same Time

You can change some tags, such as Genre, for a group of songs at the same time. This can be a faster way to enter data because you can change multiple songs at the same time. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Select the songs whose data you want to change.
2. Open the Info window. You’ll be prompted to confirm that you want to change the information for a group of songs.
3. Click Yes to clear the prompt. The Multiple Song Information window will appear (see Figure). The information and tools in this window work in the same way as they do for individual songs. The difference is that the information and settings apply to all the songs you have selected.
4. Enter data in the fields, make changes to existing data, or use the other tools to configure the songs you have selected. As you change information, the check box next to the tag will become checked to show that you are changing that data for all the selected songs.
5. When you are done making changes, click OK. The window will close and the changes you made will be saved.