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How To Fix Blurry Album Artwork

lsumstad

Lurker
Apr 14, 2012
3
1
I'm not sure if there's already a post about something similar to this, but I couldn't find anything that helped me figure it out so I'll post this. As you may know, Google really messed up with making the album artwork's resolution sharp like they probably are on your computer, but instead really blurred and pixelated. It can be extremely annoying. So today I think I might have found a solution. Please keep in mind I have a Droid RAZR and I'm not positive this will work for other phones, but it most likely will. Note that I also use Play Music.

First, you want to connect you phone to your computer and select "USB Mass Storage" or "PC Mode" and open up the "Android" file folder on your computer then opening "data". You'll come to a list of files with the prefix "com". You'd want to click on the file named "com.android.providers.media" followed by "albumthumbs". It'll bring you to a list of files with no extensions. Those are the incredibly low quality album covers. When you try and open them, Windows will ask you what you want to open it with, you can just choose Windows Photo Viewer. But make sure the little check on the lower left of the window is unchecked. I unfortunately have no photos of the low-resolution photos since I already changed them all. But you will see the very blurry, pixelated cover art. What you want to do then is find the high-resolution matching cover art (I just Google it and find the highest square resolution), rename it to the low-resolution file, then drop it in and choose "Move and Replace". Repeat that process for the following files. Then simply close out, eject the device, and enjoy sharp, clean album covers.

Let me know if you need something explained or if there are any issues!
 
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First I will say that this post solved my problem.
The reason for my searching was not blurry album pictures, but the fact that I could not replace an image. I stored a set of MP3 files for a spanish course on the sd card and provided an image for the media player. The image file was placed together with the sound files. When I later changed the image to a better choice, the player icon did not change even when the original image was removed! Then I tried another media player from Google Play, but the problem was still there.
Google You Have an Issue Here!
When Android has created an album art icon it sticks with it.
Except when you break into its interior "com.android.providers.media/albumthumbs" and corrects the fault.
Thanks Isumstad!
 
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None of this helped me, please this is driving me crazy!!
1. I don't have a ""com.android.providers.media" folder.
2. I've tried using "Album Art Grabber" and other apps to delete and replace artwork - this doesn't work, it says album artwork cleared and it isn't.
3. I've put 600x600 jpegs in the folders with the correct name.

None of this worked!! It is beyond frustrating when I go to the trouble of correctly naming and putting in the tags for all my music when the album art looks like crap.
I can't even delete it to make it have no artwork!

Please help
 
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I don't have Droid Razr nor Play Music..so can't help there.

But FWIW I always use Rocket Player, and found that handles album art really well. If I don't like the default, it's low resolution, blurry, or missing, it can go online and find me a choice of alternatives to use...
rocket player album art.jpg
 
Last edited:
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