Artwork types

Common Art Types

Artwork contents
	Artwork Main Page Artwork Types; Creating Artwork; Changing Artwork; Album Artwork; Artist Artwork; Live TV Artwork; Movie Artwork; Movie Set Artwork; Music Video Artwork; TV Show Artwork; Season Artwork; Episode Artwork; See also: Artwork Cache; JSON-RPC & Skin Access ; Artwork Dump (v19↑); Artwork Beef (v18↓); Import-export library; Return to: Music Library Portal; Video Library Portal;

This page describes the common types of artwork used by Kodi skins, scrapers and other art add-ons, where they are used and their specifications. See the linked pages for information on how to use them in Kodi.

Note: All resolutions are suggestions and roughly fall in line with the sizing at the scraper sites. You may modify the resolution to suit your own needs, but the aspect ratio must be maintained otherwise the image may undergo stretching, squashing or cropping when viewed in Kodi. If you intend to share your artwork, check the scraper sites to ensure your artworks are within their minimum and maximum limits.

actor

Used in: Movie artwork TV-Show artwork

The Actor artwork is a portrait of an actor for display in the cast information pages.

The files are named as <FirstName>_<LastName>.jpg and are saved in the dedicated .actors folder in the movie folder and tv show folder.

Image specifications
Name	<FirstName>_<LastName>.jpg
Type	jpg
Resolution	1000w x 1500h
Aspect Ratio	2:3
Transparent background	No

Album

For album cover images, see: thumb

Artist

For artist/band images, see: thumb

back

Used in: Music- Albums artwork

This is the album back cover, which often includes a track listing, though the design varies. They are often used in detail views focused on a single album.

Image specifications
Name	back
Type	jpg
Resolution	1000w x 1000h
Aspect Ratio	1:1
Transparent background	No

banner

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music- Artists artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

In the video library, banners are wide and short images that contain recognizable characters or props from the video and typically includes a clearly visible logo or the name of the movie, movie set or tv show.

In the music library it contains the artist or band members and typically includes a clearly visible logo or the name of the artist/band

Image specifications
Name	banner
Type	jpg or png
Resolution	1000w x 185h
Aspect Ratio	200:37
Transparent background	No

characterart

Used in: TV-Show artwork

Characterart are png transparent images of iconic characters or objects from the show. Not in common use in Kodi

Image specifications
Name	characterart
Type	png
Resolution	512w x 512h
Aspect Ratio	1:1
Transparent background	Yes

clearart

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music- Artists artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

Clearart have a transparent background with recognizable characters or props from the video along with a logo or name and its transparent background allows it to be overlaid images or video with minimal impact.

Image specifications
Name	clearart
Type	png
Resolution	1000w x 562h
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Transparent background	Yes

clearlogo

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music- Artists artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

Logos typically use the distinctive font associated with the video and is uncluttered by other images. The transparent background allows it to be overlaid images or video with minimal impact.

Image specifications
Name	clearlogo
Type	png
Resolution	800w x 310h
Aspect Ratio	80:31
Transparent background	Yes

discart

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music- Albums artwork Music Video artwork

Discart replicates the picture on the physical Blu-ray or other disc. Although the disc artwork is round, the image itself is square and the disc image is placed in the center on a transparent background.

Image specifications
Name	discart
Type	png
Resolution	1000w x 1000h
Aspect Ratio	1:1
Transparent background	Yes

fanart

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music- Artists artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

They are used as full screen displays.

Fanart has no text on the image. (fanart with text is known as landscape. See below)

Image specifications
Name	fanart
Type	jpg or png
Resolution	1920w x 1080h 3840w x 2160h
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Transparent background	No

Note: For the Music library, the file names recognised by Kodi and loaded as local fanart can be configured by entries in the advancedsettings.xml

fanart#

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music- Artists artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

This is Multiple fanart. It has the same specifications as fanart in the previous section.

It is possible to download and save additional high quality fanart which the skin can display, usually in a slideshow. Multiple fanart is reliant on a supporting skin. Multiple fanart is the replacement of the "extrafanart" folders.

Multiple additional fanart is named "fanart1", "fanart2", and so on with the number increasing for each artwork. The number can increase to 10 and beyond, but there may be a limitation to how many the skin will display, which is usually 20 or less. The suffixed numbers cannot be zero-padded.

keyart

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

Keyart is a poster without text or a logo. This is useful as a separate item in a skinner's toolbox as it can be paired with a clearlogo or large text title elsewhere on the window, and without text it is less distracting in the background or half-obscured, similar to fanart.

Image specifications
Name	keyart
Type	jpg
Resolution	1000w x 1500h
Aspect Ratio	2:3
Transparent background	No

landscape

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music- Artists artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

Landscape images are fanart with text. They are used in certain page layouts for browsing. If the Landscape image is not available, skins can make passable replacements by using fanart and overlaying the clearlogo.

Image specifications
Name	landscape
Type	jpg
Resolution	1000w x 562h
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Transparent background	No

logo

No longer used.

Use clearlogo.png instead

poster

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

Posters replicates the movie posters often seen in cinema complexes, or the front cover of home video releases, and contain a clearly visible logo or name of the video.

Image specifications
Name	poster
Type	jpg or png
Resolution	1000w x 1500h
Aspect Ratio	2:3
Transparent background	No

poster# - character poster sets

Used in: Movie artwork

This is multiple posters and has the same specifications as Posters above.

These multiple posters are released as a set which displays the characters of the movie. Each poster in the set highlights one character and there can be up to 20 poster per movie. There can be multiple sets per movie, each set differing in style. Each poster in the set is designed to have a fixed position order, usually because they can be placed edge to edge to create a larger artwork.

The intention is that they are displayed in a multiimage sideshow. More information and examples can be found in this thread.

spine

Used in: Music- Albums artwork

Album spines replicate the album spine found on standard CD cases. They typically have the name of the album and artist, but are too thin to have much of a design beyond continuing the front or back image. They are often used as thin identifiers for unfocused items in a list of albums.

Image specifications
Name	spine
Type	jpg or png
Resolution	50w x 1000h
Aspect Ratio	1:20
Transparent background	No

thumb

Thumb is the most basic art type (and the oldest historically) used by Kodi skins. The properties differ depending on the area of Kodi it is being used in. Skins often show this type of art both full size, and also as a small icon alongside each item in a list.

Video Library

The thumb.jpg image should only be used for episode artwork. It should not be used in any other area of the video library.

Image specifications
Name	thumb
Type	jpg
Resolution	960w x 540h
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Transparent background	No

Music Library

Used in: Music- Artists artwork Music- Albums artwork Source Folder Icons

This art type holds high quality images of the album front cover and square artist images. The artist images usually show the whole band without any text or logos.

Kodi will recognise a variety of file names and load them as a thumb. These file names can be adjusted by entries in advancedsettings.xml. The export facility will export this art type as folder.jpg which may mean duplicated artwork if you used the thumb filename in local art and export artwork to the same location.

Image specifications
Name	folder, cover or thumb
Type	jpg
Resolution	500w x 500h
Aspect Ratio	1:1
Transparent background	No

Other Types

This section lists other artwork types that are...

Still in the experimental stage, or
Still in use, but being phased out, and
Used by only a small number of skins at this time, usually for one of the previous two reasons

Animated Artwork

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

Still experimental, but Kodi has basic support for displaying animated artwork, and two artwork types have a decent collection of animated options: posters and fanart for movies. The most comprehensive support for animated artwork is Skin Helper Service, which has taken to naming these as "animatedposter" and "animatedfanart".

New animated movie posters (and textless posters / keyart which could be named "animatedkeyart") are often posted to this forum thread.

Limitations of animated artwork

Kodi's support for displaying animated artwork is basic, and does have some limitations.

Limitation 1-: Kodi does not save animated artwork to the texture cache and will not play them (only displaying the first frame) unless they are stored on a client-local file system. ie- Animated artwork will not work across networks.

Limitation 2-

There is a hard limit on the number of pixels in a single animated artwork. The size of animated artwork is limited to roughly 12 frames of 1920x1080. This limit is defined as fully decoded pixels. The trend for animated posters is for smaller images with more frames (a recent "animatedposter" is 500x713 with 60 frames). Kodi will discard any remaining frames after it has reached this limit, which will probably hitch unpleasantly, so obeying this limit is important.

Technically this limit is 11 frames but Kodi will decode full frames until it has decoded MORE than this, so the calculation is

1920 × 1080 = 2,073,600 * 11 (frames) = 22,809,600 pixels plus one more frame

characterart#

Used in: Movie artwork

Note: This image type is no longer supported. The site that hosted the multiple characterart images closed down. Artwork Beef and Artwork Dump do not support this image type. Only one skin (Aeon Tajo) still uses this image, but Kodi can still cache local images if the Type is set in the artwork settings page- Settings > Media > Videos > Artwork

This is multiple character art for Movies. It has the same concept as character art for TV-Shows described above. In contrast the artwork has no official conventions in terms of resolution and aspect ratio.

It could be used as single artwork named "characterart" or multiple artwork named "characterart1", "characterart2", and so on with the number increasing for each artwork. The number can increase to 10 and beyond, but numbers cannot be zero-padded.

More information and sample content can be found in the official forum thread.

Image specifications
Name	characterart
Type	png
Resolution	variable
Aspect Ratio	variable
Transparent background	Yes

extrafanart Folder

Used in: Movie artwork Movie sets artwork Music Video artwork TV-Show artwork

This method is slowly being phased out in favour of the fanart# method described in the previous section

It is possible to download and save additional high quality fanart which the skin can display, usually in a slideshow. Extra fanart is reliant on a supporting skin and the images have exactly the same properties as the standard fanart described above.

In v17 and prior, Extra Fanart is stored in a separate folder named extrafanart. Create a folder named extrafanart in the folder of the movie or the TV Show, and place each extra fanart image in it. This artwork is not added to the Kodi library, instead skins access the folder directly. A downside to this method is that it can wake hard drives while browsing the library and cause freezing of the GUI while the drives wake up. The filename is mostly not important.

Image specifications
Name	fanart
Type	jpg or png
Resolution	1920w x 1080h 3840w x 2160h
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Transparent background	No

extrathumbs Folder

Used in: Movie artwork

It is possible to download and save additional thumbnails which the skin can display. Extra thumbs are reliant on a supporting skin and the images have exactly the same properties as the standard thumb described above.

Extra Thumbs are stored in a separate Folder named "extrathumbs". Create a Folder named extrathumbs in the folder of the Movie. Each Extra Thumb must be named thumbX.jpg where X is a sequential number starting with 0 (thumb0.jpg, thumb1.jpg, thumb2.jpg, etc). There is a limit of 10 thumb images allowable. Be aware that some skins utilise less than 10 of the images.

This artwork is not in common use.

Source Folder Icon

The Source Folder icon is a landscape image that can be used to replace the standard folder icons when browsing your sources in the video menu. This image file is saved directly within the Source directory.

To enable the image...

Navigate to Videos>Files in the menu system
Highlight a source and call up the context menu
Select Choose Thumbnail.

If you have saved in the image in the correct location, it will be available to select immediately. If not, you will need to navigate to locate and select it. The image must remain in its original location once selected. Deleting the image will remove it from view in the folder icon.

You are able to apply the folder thumb by modifying the \userdata\sources.xml as follows

        <source>
            <name>Movies</name>
            <path pathversion="1">F:\Movies\</path>
            <allowsharing>true</allowsharing>
            <thumbnail>F:\Movies\folder.jpg</thumbnail>
        </source>

Image specifications
Name	folder
Type	jpg
Resolution	640w x 360h
Aspect Ratio	16:9
Transparent background	No

Artwork Usage Chart

The following is a guide only and charts common usage. ¹

Artwork is skin dependant and skinners are free to use artwork how and where they choose. Some skins may conform with the following, others may not.

Artwork Usage
	Movies		Music			TV Shows
	Movie	Movie Sets	Artists	Albums	Music Video	TV Show	Seasons	Episodes	Source Folder
actor	Yes	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No
back	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
banner	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
characterart	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No
clearart	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
clearlogo	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
discart	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	No	No
fanart	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
fanart#	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
keyart	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
landscape	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
poster	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
spine	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	No
thumb	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes