If you’re a regular user of iTunes, then you will have at least stumbled across Coverflow mode.
By way of using coverart to navigate your media, It’s a really nice way of show casing your music, TV or Movie collection.
I have gone one step further by actually using a DVD template to make my Movies look like a virtual DVD collection
This brilliant template was created by manicho and can be downloaded from here for free.
It puts your coverart into a transparent case which looks amazing. You need to use Photoshop in order to pop your coverart into the virtual case.
The problem iTunes had was that when you tried to use this image, it would take away the transparency and turn it black. This didn’t totally ruin the look, as it just looked like you had a collection of black dvd cases instead.
For months I have been looking for a solution to this problem, and it seemed that iTunes just didn’t want to accept transparency in images.
Recently this has all changed!
Transparency is now working in iTunes coverflow. I’m not sure if this was due to a new itunes version, or due to the software I’m using to insert the coverart.
I am using the tagging software Subler which is a great way to tag your movies/tv shows to organise in iTunes. It can be downloaded for free here.
In order to get transparency to work, I had to use Subler to remove the current artwork, save, re-insert the image and save again.
Refresh the coverart on your iTunes movie/tv show, by doing a “get info” on the file and the new image should now show. (if your file is under 2GB in size, you can do this all through “get info”)
You could also use transparency to show images of virtual CD’s, and there are many other uses for transparency.I’m still “non the wiser” as to why it suddenly works, so i will keep investigating.
Please let me know if you’ve had a different experience in getting transparency to work in iTunes. But for now enjoy!
Filed under: Mac Tagged: | apple, art, cover, deciphering, films, flow, iPhone, ipod, itc, Mac, mp3, pictures, trans, transparency
Awesome! Any tips for inserting my posters into the DVD layer in photoshop e.g. resizing etc and what you do to export / save the final image?
My tip is to hide the semi transparent DVD parts until your just left with the default movie poster. Import your new poster on it, resize it to cover the default poster. Unhide the rest of the DVD parts, and your DVD case should be ready to export. Export or “save for web” as a PNG and your done. Save the Photoshop project and keep as your template for further cases. Just hide the previous posters, don’t delete them as you may want to redo them in the future.
Great, think I have the hang of it now!
One last thing, what are you doing for TV series with the CD sized cases? Also do you know of any Blu Ray cases (I have quite a few HD movies in my iTunes)
For TV shows I just use the regular album art, but you could still use the template if you wish, would just be a little harder to read as the images would be smaller.
Most of my recent additions have been HD content. I came across the following bluray template.
http://stntoulouse.deviantart.com/art/Blu-ray-Photoshop-Template-151004645
I haven’t used it as it doesn’t look as nice because there’s no transparency. Let me know if you use this as I’d like to see what it looks like as a library in iTunes.
You probably already have your places, but I get the best quality movie posters/art from:
http://getvideoartwork.com
http://outnow.ch
Or http://www.cdcovers.cc for everything else you can’t find
It appears to look great in coverflow but on my Apple TV there are some grey patchy bits just off the image corners (where there should be no graphics)
In Photoshop I selected trim to get rid of as much background canvas as poss. Maybe I’m doing something wrong here?
You should permanently hide the background canvas as it is not needed. Send or post a screenshot of your DVD case so I can check it for you.