Hi, I was wondering if you can tell Picard to keep the largest (most of the time this is also the best quality) cover art automatically? Either being local or from MusicBrainz?
By default, it will overwrite the embedded and file cover art by the version found on-line, but in a lot of cases this is not even 1200x1200 pixels, and most stuff I have has better quality images, but I always have to compare them by hand and then select ‘Keep original image’, otherwise it gets replaced by a worse image.
Thanks for any tips!
Picard v3, currently in Beta testing, has an option to never overwrite larger embedded images.
Greyed out in my example as I don’t use embedded images.
Beware that the current default for art size is set at a small 500px so you’ll also want to increase that too.
Current release of v2 needs the human to make the artwork choices.
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V2 has it too. 
I can’t change the cover to 1200px. I have to keep it 500px because my Denon DRA-800H receiver only allows covers up to 500px.
It probably doesn’t have enough “RAM” to handle 1200px.
EDIT:
Key phrase in instruction: “may not be”
“If the image size (pixels) of an album artwork exceeds 500 × 500 (WMA/MP3/Apple Lossless/DSD) or 349 × 349 (MPEG-4 AAC), then music may not be played back properly.”
Google:
The 500×500 limit is more like:
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a “safe guaranteed compatibility” value,
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protection against limited RAM and slower processors inside the receiver,
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an old HEOS/USB compatibility guideline.
That is why:
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one 1200×1200 album works perfectly,
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another 1200×1200 album may fail,
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sometimes the JPEG file size (KB/MB) matters more than the pixel dimensions themselves.
HEOS/Denon users have also reported that larger covers such as 700×700 or 960×960 work correctly.
The safest settings for Denon/HEOS devices are:
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500×500 or 600×600,
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baseline JPG,
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preferably under 300–500 KB,
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a single FRONT cover image,
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ID3v2.3 UTF-16 tags.
If you are building a large music library for a Denon receiver, it is still a good idea to stay around 500–600 px because:
Looks like exactly what I need, so I guess I’ll have to wait until v3 is officially released.
Well, I have this on since I’ve been using Picard, it works well. But AFAIK only when there is a match and at 1200px.
Sometimes I also get 1400px hits, but I have multiple image sources configured. But I configured it to only keep 1 front.jpg as a file and only one embedded front image as well.
But if it gets a lower quality hit, it will use that… 
You can test the beta out, but it is beta. They are directly working on some of the art sections now and changes are due in the next beta release as they are busy swatting bugs.
I grab the “pre-release portable” as it will then just run in place without disrupting your current v2 Picard and you can see how well it works on a few test items. Downloads - MusicBrainz Picard
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Can this setting be applied to non-embedded album art, like Folder.jpg?
I also noticed that in the way the settings are laid out. Doesn’t seem to be the case.
But with separate files there is the “Overwrite the file if it already exists” option. By default not ticked, so you get a “cover (1).jpg” instead of being overwritten.
Maybe that could be tweaked so if overwrite is enabled, it gets a size option.
(Very bad quick mockup of a settings page if a dev is looking)
Will do, the fact that it’s portable also is great, so I can mess with it without fooking up my current setup.
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