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What is the appropriate size for album art to display correctly on the 3rd generation iPad's retina display?

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

This is difficult to answer without any of us having access to an iPad with the retina display.

Therefore, I'll suggest the resolution which Apple provides when you get your covers via the option Get Album Artwork in iTunes. I hope this is fine, as long as you do not use coverflow in full screen mode.

The dimensions are:

  • max. vertical: 600 pixels
  • max. horizontal: 600 pixels

If a cover is not square, then one size dimension has less pixels.

enter image description here

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gentmatt is correct. If you can find it, you might be safe with a 1000x1000 image. But it's doubtfull that you'll be able to find album art at that high level of resolution until the new iPad is out and about. – Matt Love Mar 13 '12 at 18:12
I think it might be best to leave this open until the iPad 3 comes out and we can see whether it will actually take advantage of higher resolution art. 600x600 would be pretty tiny (or blurry) on that screen. – Julio R. Mar 13 '12 at 19:14
up vote 0 down vote

The new iPad has a resolution of 2048-by-1536.

For good results, I would suggest a multiple of the smaller dimension, assuming you are using square album art, which you should but isn't always the case. This will allow for double scaling in much the same way as a non-retina enabled app will do.

As such, something like 768 square should yield good results. Failing that 384 square may actually scale better (4x exactly) than something arbitrary like 600.

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