Rounded Artwork

[BoringName]

Antialiasing methods can be painfully inconsistent. The quality and content of the artwork images would have a big effect on it.

You could try SmoothingMode.HighQuality, it's listed as an equivalent to SmoothingMode.Antialias but from what I've read there are differences between the two.

A possible more complicated fix would be to copy the pixel data from the original image for the edges after the curved corners and antialiasing is done.

It wouldn't be a fun job sorting that out though....

[Mayibongwe]

#1 The quality and content of the artwork images would have a big effect on it.
#2 You could try SmoothingMode.HighQuality, it's listed as an equivalent to SmoothingMode.Antialias but from what I've read there are differences between the two.
#3 A possible more complicated fix would be to copy the pixel data from the original image for the edges after the curved corners and antialiasing is done.

#1 Yep, with this colourized image below, the disparity on the middle endpoints is even higher compared to the earlier black and white artwork.
#2 I've made a comparison of the two, and with transparency on, they're identical. When a custom bg is set, antialias seems the better option as it doesn't stray a lot.
#3 I had thought about that, and nope haha, as you say, that won't be a fun avenue to take (especially considering that these are slight variants only - almost negligible really).
      Perhaps an option to sharpen the final bitmap might help things somewhat, I'll see.
      

[Haste]

Imagine a little bit of a soft dropshadow with this, it could look so neat.  

[Mayibongwe]

Imagine a little bit of a soft dropshadow with this, it could look so neat.  

I concur, currently looking into a dotnet library to help with this.
It's a bit of uncharted territory for me. So slowly but surely, it is coming along.
Will add your screenshot to the download page of the plugin - i think it looks quite nice already.

And to folks who have in the past complained about MusicBee's lack of documentation in the API, they don't know how spoilt we are

[Haste]

- New feature proposal: Ability to set custom values that apply by default to all skins which don't have their own settings yet.
This would be very handy when you have a lot of skins and are often adding new ones.

- Unwanted behavior report: It seems that updating some tags resets the cached album art.

[Mayibongwe]

- New feature proposal: Ability to set custom values that apply by default to all skins which don't have their own settings yet.
This would be very handy when you have a lot of skins and are often adding new ones.

- Unwanted behavior report: It seems that updating some tags resets the cached album art embed in the file.

Sure, #1 should be doable just fine.

#2 is a MusicBee thing, unfortunately. The problem that this causes at the moment is that the file reference remains in the plugin database.
So it won't get reprocessed after MusicBee resets it.
I will look into adding a creation/modification date for comparison so that the reference is removed should MusicBee recreate the file.

[BoringName]

Imagine a little bit of a soft dropshadow with this, it could look so neat.   

I'm not a fan of curved edges usually but that screen shot does look pretty nice.

I should probably look at implementing it for 3DBee.

[Mayibongwe]

- New feature proposal: Ability to set custom values that apply by default to all skins which don't have their own settings yet.
This would be very handy when you have a lot of skins and are often adding new ones.

- Unwanted behavior report: It seems that updating some tags resets the cached album art embed in the file.

I've uploaded a new plugin version which should address both requests.
When you start MusicBee, a file called 'default.dat' under the skins folder will be created based on your current skin settings and then going forward:
all freshly loaded skins will default to that - the file can be edited as desired.

For request #2, you will have to reapply the effects using the plugin hotkey after editing your tags - this will only be done to that 1 file.
As mentioned, this is the best compromise as I cannot stop MusicBee from rebuilding the artwork cache following a tag edit.

Edit:
well, technically, I could probably stop it by setting the artwork cache files to read-only (thus preventing MB from rewriting them),
but I mean, you can imagine what kind of future problems we'll get by doing that. So nope, the compromise will have to do.

[Steven]

You could use the c# file watcher to monitor new or updated files in the cache folders

[aktor]

In order to use this plugin in a skin with different background colors the border must be set to transparent but then this frame is visible. Is this possible to correct.

[Mayibongwe]

In order to use this plugin in a skin with different background colors the border must be set to transparent but then this frame is visible. Is this possible to correct.

No, not with the plugin as that is a frame created by MusicBee.
Good news is that you are already making some headway with it here: https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=42252.0

[Mayibongwe]

could you add the option for shadows?

Imagine a little bit of a soft dropshadow with this, it could look so neat.  

Is this what we mean? There'll be options for both users (corners rounded or not).
The experience has been the equivalent of using Paint.Net without a UI.

[Haste]

Let me preface this by saying I unfortunately don't know anything about coding nor designing.

I'd like a shadow from an ambient light around the album art. Or a combination of an ambient light an a key light right above the album art like here: https://m2.material.io/design/environment/light-shadows.html#light

I'm thinking to get closer to that, maybe it's possible to increases the size of the shadow, increase the blurring, reduce the opacity.
Offsetting the shadow layer only down and not to the right.
Maybe using 2 layers. One for ambient light, one for key light.

But yeah, if it's like paint.net without an UI, I take it it's not trivial what I'm asking right now  

Maybe some settings could be exposed to the users. The most obvious one would be the opacity.

edit: here are some examples I found that I think look decent:
- https://flatstudbucket.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/component/field_image/1345/1433-block_12_2x.png
- https://cdn.dribbble.com/users/779743/screenshots/5947881/attachments/1279168/apple_music_home_2x.png

[Mayibongwe]

Sure, no probs, i will play around with it again to see if I can get much closer.

You could use the c# file watcher to monitor new or updated files in the cache folders

Thanks Steven, the automation will help things a lot. Haven't gotten it to work reliably as yet though.
The changed event is firing more than once - must be due to the immediate overwrite on my side that it's picking up.
I will find a way to work around that, thanks again!

[Mayibongwe]

I'm thinking to get closer to that, maybe it's possible to increases the size of the shadow, increase the blurring, reduce the opacity.
Offsetting the shadow layer only down and not to the right.

There will be skin settings for these.
This a bit better? I've compared two sets with a 1 unit marginal difference between the blur levels.
If this is within expectation, then I can upload a new plugin version and we'll take it from there.