Rounded Artwork

[MotleyG]

The square shape of album covers originated from practical constraints, not aesthetic preference. This standard evolved over time, but innovation like altering shapes challenges norms that were never fixed in purpose. Let users display content freely—musicians are creators, not box designers.

There are many shapes and forms to the artwork on various releases including round picture discs that have no cover, long boxes for CD were popular in the earlier years of that format, and box sets come in all sorts of variouos shapes and sizes. Including cover images that match these formats isn't unusual. Most image software defaults to squared corners regardless of the actual dimensions anyhow.

It's always good to have options as long as usability and performance aren't compromised.

IMHO - This is the far more important aspect. Many of us spend a lot of time making sure we get perfect, exact rips of our music. The artwork is often dealt with similarly without compromise. And many musicians would argue that their album artwork IS a part of their creative process! Either way, without an option to display album art as-is from the stored image, I would push back on this idea myself. But allowing users the option to choose to intentionally round the corners of their own library display is a legitimate request.

[VNCE]

Hi,

I would like to understand how the plugin works before installing it.
 
My concern is that it might replace the original embedded cover art with a cropped version directly in the file.
I would prefer that the original embedded cover art not be replaced, as I need to preserve it for archival purposes.

Thank you in advance for your clarification.

[aktor]

It does only replace files in internal cache folder.

[Mayibongwe]

My concern is that it might replace the original embedded cover art with a cropped version directly in the file.
I would prefer that the original embedded cover art not be replaced, as I need to preserve it for archival purposes.

As aktor mentioned, this won't touch the music files themselves.
It only modifies MusicBee's cached artwork - in other words, copies of your actual album covers created for display purposes in various MB locations.
I should make a note of this in the start post and add-on page - thanks for asking.

[Haste]

Awesome plugin.

Quick question. If I reduce the radius to another a smaller value than default. How do I make sure all the artwork cached changes to the new smaller radius?

[Mayibongwe]

With MusicBee open, can you try deleting the artwork cache folder (so that it rebuilds the originals).
Also delete the plugin database file inside the appData folder.
Then restart MB and the new radius should kick in.

[Haste]

Thank you.

I've tried some different values and I'm getting somewhat mixed result with the corners.

For example this is with radius 12:



The right and bottom corners look different from top and left for example. (You might need to zoom in to see what I mean)

I had the same issue with radius 10.
But maybe there are some "magic" values that work better.

BTW, I have no idea how feasible it is but... this plugin might open for even more cool stuffs. For example custom margins, shadows, outlines, ...

[Mayibongwe]

#1   The right and bottom corners look different from top and left for example. (You might need to zoom in to see what I mean)
#2   BTW, I have no idea how feasible it is but... this plugin might open for even more cool stuffs. For example custom margins, shadows, outlines, ...

#1   A difficult one to spot, but it should be fixed now if you redownload the plugin - all four corners are now even.

        I have also added two hotkeys: (i) Artwork: Rebuild Cache   and   (ii) Artwork: Round Corners.
        While (ii) now alleviates the need for a restart, (i) still requires it because MB only rebuilds the cache folder on startup - all the hotkey will do is delete the cache folder for you.

#2   Yeah, that's what I'd thought to myself too.
        Using the same technique, I was able to convert the artwork to grayscale which paved a way for a full-blown dark skin (albeit one that won't be popular amongst folks).
        But yes, there's room for achieving some naughty aesthetics with this.

        MusicBee's skinning options already support outlines. But yeah, things like glow effects, changing the perspective on the artwork have come to mind too.

[Haste]

#1    Thank you.
         I can see now that it looks perfectly symmetric. The hotkeys are a nice time save as well!

         I think it can potentially be improved still. The sides are currently translucid which gives a fuzzy look to the artwork.
         Would it be possible to have fully opaque sides? (while keeping the antialiasing on the corners)


#2    For the outline, I am aware of the skinning option and I've been using in it. But now with rounded corners we need a different solution in order to make the outline conform to the new shape.

[aktor]

In deferent views with different cover sizes the same corner radius doesn't work well. would you be able to modify your plugin if developer gives us an option to store album artwork for different views in separate folders?

[Mayibongwe]

I think it can potentially be improved still. The sides are currently translucid which gives a fuzzy look to the artwork.
Would it be possible to have fully opaque sides? (while keeping the antialiasing on the corners)

Would you be able to post a side-by-side comparison of how this would look (before vs after)? I'm not able to picture this.

In deferent views with different cover sizes the same corner radius doesn't work well.
would you be able to modify your plugin if developer gives us an option to store album artwork for different views in separate folders?

On my side, I would be able to in the event that it was supported by MusicBee. But I'm highly doubtful you will get your wish though,
because such MB behaviour will go on to affect other users who have no need for artwork to be cached on a per view/tab/layout basis (unnecessary waste of disc space, etc).

Edit:
I know you said it's something you would request as an option, but even at that, you need to remember that
the time that would be spent implementing such an option by MusicBee's extremely busy developer,  would need to be justified...
such as, at the very least, the wish having an overwhelming amount of support - which as you can tell, is something severely lacking on this side of the play ground.

[Haste]

Would you be able to post a side-by-side comparison of how this would look (before vs after)? I'm not able to picture this.

The "edges" I'm talking about are what I circled in this image:
before:

After:

This is a crude edit. I just removed 1 pixels on the borders. This would look wrong in practice because I degraded the quality of the rounded corners. But it shows how the edges are now "solid" and not fuzzy from being blended with the background.

[boroda]

@Mayibongwe, could you add the option for shadows?

[Mayibongwe]

@Mayibongwe, could you add the option for shadows?

sure, I'll have a look.

[Mayibongwe]

The "edges" I'm talking about are what I circled in this image:

It doesn't look like I can do anything about this without switching off the antialiasing - which is only applied on the corners (the slight transparency on the middle edges is a byproduct).
As far as my testing goes, when the corners are transparent (i.e. without a bg override set), then the borders are solid/unaltered for the most part.

Below are my test results based on the row highlighted in yellow (which is the endpoint of the curve from the top-right).
So with transparency on, the pixel at that point is identical to the original image.