I’d like to see artist artwork managed like album artwork in Roon where local files could be chosen for avatar and banner slots when art served by Roon is inaccurate or ugly.
This is how Plex works – you’re presented a bunch of artwork options for designated slots but are easily able to upload your own artwork to your server when the options do not fit.
At the moment my Plexamp artist page looks perfect whereas my Roon artist page boasts bad crops made by other people and many empty slots. I can attempt to improve my Roon page but there is risk that my carefully cleared submissions or carefully considered changes will be rejected or my edits will be replaced by something that looks awful. All of this has happened to me so a proportion of my VAD activity has been a waste of effort. It’s important not to waste volunteers’ time particularly if your volunteers are also paying customers.
This is my experience with Art Director. There is nothing wrong with the tool but there are big issues with its use by certain contributors, too few controls to stop bad edits going live and inconsistent behaviour by moderators when edits or submissions are made.
You’re right, there should be manual artist edit options in Roon where you can choose your own favorite avatar, wide, and narrow banners. That this stuff is different every time I use it, through no action of my own, is extremely disorienting.
There is a feature request “User preference for Art Director photos” which you could vote for. The idea behind it is for your own choices to be used if you prefer, and still be available for others to choose, rather than the current winner takes all strategy.
For popular artists things are mostly settled now, so I started uploading photos locally for the photos I dislike most. It is a bit tricky to find photos which works good as avatar and banner, but I found some I like much more than the ones provided by valence. Hopefully these will not get kicked with a future update.
We’re going through a couple of thousands of updates a day, so sometimes it takes a tiny while before it is approved (and in some cases rejected). Hang in there!
Good uploads, crops and edits are quick to approve, but we also see…er…examples of different levels of aesthetics out there, haha. These take longer, both in moderation and because we have to reject and send back for recropping. Thanks for all your effort and patience.
P.S. Some kicked the photo of Dominique Fils Aimee with the higher resolution, which I have uploaded and kept the one with the lower resolution. I uploaded the photo again, hopefully this time the photo with the lower resolution will be kicked.
Done, deleted all connection to the Valence and Art director. Downloaded new pictures of all artists that i already did not download. Tok me 3 evenings / nights. so now no pictures are changing without me doing it myself.
