Chapter 15. View, Edit, and Manage Photos
With its big glossy screen and wide black or white border, you could easily mistake the iPad for one of those digital picture frames designed to sit on your mantle and show an ever-running slideshow of your kids and pets. The iPad is no imposter here—it can serve as a digital photo album whenever you want it to. (You can even take those pictures with the latest iPad; flip back to Chapter 6 for photo-snapping instructions.)
Your thin little tablet can replace stacks and stacks of paper-based photo albums. You can overlay your snaps on a map showing where you shot them (opposite page), and you can email your favorites to friends.
With the proper apps, you can touch up your photos on the go, too. And with the right kind of audio-video cable or a second-generation Apple TV, you can play your pictures on the big screen for the whole family—making it the Kodak Carousel of the 21st century.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when your friends see what you can do with photos on the iPad, you may hear a few thousand more.
Get Pictures Onto Your iPad
The iPad can display your handsome photographs in most of the file formats digital cameras use, including JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF, and even those large, uncompressed RAW files favored by serious photographers who don’t want to sacrifice a pixel of precious image data. But to show your pics off on the iPad, you have to first get them onto the iPad. You do that in several ways.
Transfer Photos with iTunes
If you keep your digital photo collection organized in programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements, iPhoto, or Aperture—or even loosely in a folder on your hard drive—you can sling them onto your iPad with an iTunes syncing session. Chapter 11 has detailed information on syncing iPad content using iTunes, but here’s what you need to do for photos:
Connect your iPad to your PC or Mac with the iPad’s USB cable.
Once the tablet shows up in iTunes’ Source list, click its icon to select it.
In the iTunes tabs for your iPad, click the one for Photos, the last tab over.
Turn on the checkbox next to “Sync photos from,” and then choose your photo program or photo-storage folder; that lets iTunes know where to find your pics. You can copy everything over or just the albums (sets of pictures) you select. If you don’t use any of the programs that the “Sync photos from” menu lists and you just want to copy over a folder of photos from your hard drive, select “Choose folder” from the menu and then navigate to the desired folder.
Click Sync (or Apply, if this is your first time syncing photos) after you make your selections.
Once you start the sync, iTunes “optimizes” your photos. This has nothing to do with your photographic skills and everything to do with storage. If necessary, iTunes down-samples your pics to “TV quality” so they take up less room on your ‘Pad but still display in high-res format on your tablet or TV screen.
Transfer Photos from Mail Messages and Web Pages
Do you have a bunch of photos someone sent you as file attachments to an email message? Or do you see a copyright-free image on a web page you want to include in your collection? To add these pictures to your iPad’s Photos program, press your finger on the photo. Wait for a box to pop up with a Save Image button. Tap it to store a copy of the picture in the Photos→Saved Photos album, where you can admire it. If you have multiple photos attached to an email message, the iPad asks if you want to save them all.
Transfer Photos with the iPad Camera Connection Kit
The iPad can slurp up pictures from your digital camera too, but there’s a catch: You first have to plunk down $29 for Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit at store.apple.com or other fine retail establishments.
The kit contains two white adapters for the iPad’s Dock Connector port. One has a jack for your camera’s USB cable and the other has a slot for Secure Digital memory cards full of pictures—in case you don’t have your camera’s USB cable. (While Apple’s USB adapter officially works with cameras only, word is that some USB keyboards and headsets unofficially work with it.)
Once you plug an adapter into the iPad and insert a memory card or connect your camera via USB cable, wait for the iPad’s Photos app to open, and then:
Tap Import All to grab all the pictures, or tap individual shots to checkmark them before you tap the Import button.
When the iPad asks, decide if you want to keep or delete the photos on the camera or memory card after you import them.
To see the new arrivals on your iPad, tap Photos→Last Import.
Unplug the iPad camera connector and put it in a safe place. When you get back to your computer, you can sync these pictures back to iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop Elements by connecting the iPad and using your picture program’s command to import the new photos.
Find Pictures on Your iPad
Now that you’ve got some pictures onto your iPad, it’s time to locate them. Go to the Home screen and tap the Photos icon.
The iPad organizes your picture collection in up to five ways—if you happen to use all the features of iPhoto ’09 and later on the Mac. After you open the iPad’s Photos app, tap the buttons at the top of the window (circled) to see the ways you can sort your images:
Photos. This view displays thumbnails of all your pictures lumped together in one place. If you didn’t group your images into albums before you transferred them, they all show up here.
Albums. If you imported individual albums by ticking off their boxes in iTunes, tap the Albums button to see those pictures grouped under the same album name as they were in your photo program.
Events. Mac folks using recent versions of iPhoto or Aperture can also view photos by Event. These two programs group similar images, like those taken on the same day, into Events. Tap the Events button on the iPad to see any of these sets synced from your Mac.
Faces. Apple introduced a face-recognition feature in iPhoto ‘09 and later that automatically groups photos based on the people in them. If you use this feature on the Mac, iTunes gives you the option to sync entire albums of just one person. Then you can find your Cate or Zachary photo sets when you tap the Faces button on the iPad.
Places. If you geotag your photos—by shooting them with a GPS-enabled camera or by manually placing them on a map with tools in iPhoto ’09 or later—the iPad groups them based on their geographic coordinates. Tap Places to see your photo sets stuck to a world map with virtual red push-pins.
In album form, your picture sets look like a stack of loose photographs clumped together in a sloppy pile. Tap one of the piles with a fingertip and the photos disperse and snap into a grid where you can see each one as a small thumbnail. If you’re not quite sure what photo is in which album pile, pinch and spread your fingers over a pile to see a quick animated preview of its contents without opening the album all the way.
Tip
Want to take a screenshot of some cool thing on your iPad? Hold down the Home button and press the Sleep/Wake button as though it were a camera shutter. The resulting snap lands in Photos→Camera Roll (or Saved Photos on first-gen iPads). You can transfer the pic back to your computer the next time you sync. If your computer has a program that senses when you connect a digital camera, it will likely leap up and offer to pull in the iPad’s screenshots for you.
View Pictures on Your iPad
To see the pictures you synced over from your computer, tap the Photos icon on the iPad’s Home screen. Then tap the Photos button at the top of the screen to see your pictures in a grid of thumbnails. If you chose to copy over specific photo albums, tap the name of an album. Mac syncers can also tap the Events, Faces, or Places button to see photos sorted by those categories, as Get Pictures Onto Your iPad explains.
On the thumbnails screen, you can do several things:
Tap a thumbnail to see the photo full-size on the iPad screen.
Double-tap an open photo to magnify it.
Spread and pinch your fingers on-screen (those fancy moves described in Chapter 2) to zoom in and out of a photo. Drag your finger around on-screen to pan through a zoomed-in photo.
Flick your finger horizontally across the screen in either direction to scroll through your pictures at high speed. You can show off your vacation photos really fast this way (your friends will thank you).
Rotate the iPad to have horizontal photos fill the width of the screen or to have vertical photos fill its height.
With a photo open, tap the iPad’s glass to display a strip of itsy-bitsy thumbnails of all the photos in the current album at the bottom of the screen. Tap or slide to a thumbnail to jump to a particular picture.
Tap the 
icon in the menu bar to email a picture (Email and Print Photos), send it to MobileMe (Use the MobileMe Gallery), assign it to your iPad’s Contact’s program (Maintain Contacts), set it as wallpaper (Change the iPad’s Wallpaper), print it (Print With Your iPad), or copy it.
To get back to your library, tap the Photos or album-name button at the top of the screen.
Email and Print Photos
To share your photos, you can email or print one or a bunch of pics right from the iPad’s Photos app:
One photo. To email or print the photo currently on-screen, tap the iPad’s glass to make the photo controls appear, and then tap the
icon in the upper-right corner. Tap Email Photo to have the
iPad’s mail program attach the photo to a new message, ready for you to address. Tap
Print for a paper copy (as long as you have your iPad configured for printing; see Print With Your iPad).Multiple photos. To email a bunch of pictures at once, tap open the album containing the photos. Tap the
icon in the top-right corner, and then tap the pictures you want
to send; blue checkmarks appear in the corner of each thumbnail you select. Tap the
Email button to attach them to a new message. If you have a draft message in progress,
tap the Copy button, then switch to the mail program, open your message, and hold down
your finger until the Paste button appears. Tap it to paste in the pictures. Tap Print
for paper copies of the checked photos.
Delete Photos
You can delete photos from your iPad in two ways. If you synced photo albums over from iTunes, connect the iPad to your computer, open iTunes, hit the Photos tab, and turn off the checkboxes by those albums. Click Apply and then Sync to “unsync,” or remove, those pics from the iPad’s gallery.
If you have pictures in your Camera Roll or Saved Photos album you want to ditch, you can delete a currently open picture
by tapping the 
icon and then tapping Delete Photo. To delete multiple pictures from
the Camera Roll/Saved Photos thumbnail view, tap the icon, then tap the unwanted pictures to assign the Blue Checkmarks of
Selection. Tap the small red Delete button on the menu bar (circled), and then tap Delete
Selected Photos. There’s a blue Cancel button on the other side of the menu bar if you
change your mind.
Edit Photos on the iPad
In the dark, badly cropped days before there were apps, you couldn’t do much besides view the digital pictures you snapped, downloaded, or received on your mobile gadget. It was a “look, don’t retouch” approach to photos. Thankfully, things have changed.
Need to chop out that goofy guy off to the side in your Mount Rushmore photo? Want to lighten the exposure of that party shot so you can see the birthday girl’s face? With the growing collection of photo-editing programs in the App Store, you can improve your photos, right there on your iPad.
And best of all, once you’re done, you can share them online, send them to other people by email, or (if you have a second-generation Apple TV) proudly beam the fruits of your labor right onto your TV with AirPlay.
If you think you’d like to do some photo-editing on your iPad, jump into the App Store and search for photography or photo editing.
Companies add apps to the Store every week, but two that were designed for editing photos are Adobe Photoshop Express for iPad (free, shown below) and Ghostbird Software’s PhotoForge for iPad ($4, shown on the opposite page). Of the two apps, Adobe Photoshop Express is probably easier to learn and hey, you have to admit, the price is right. PhotoForge, on the other hand, aims to be a full-on digital darkroom packed with enough tools, filters, and controls to rival some desktop photo-editing programs.
With either program, you can make these adjustments in your photos:
Crop. Need to tighten the focus or remove background clutter around your subject? Use the crop tool to chop out the unwanted elements.
Straighten. If your picture was unintentionally shot at an angle or simply looks too crooked for your taste, tilt it a few degrees.
Rotate. Spin a vertical photo sideways or a horizontal pic into portrait mode. This can be helpful for emailed images that come to you in the wrong orientation.
Contrast. Bumping up the contrast can perk up photos that seem flat and muddy.
Exposure. When a photo looks too light or too dark, fiddling with the exposure controls might help.
Saturation. Not all digital cameras have accurate sensors, so if the green, green grass of the ballpark looks pale or brown, increasing the color saturation can liven up the shot.
Both Adobe Photoshop Express and PhotoForge can convert color shots to moody black-and-white images. You can also apply filters and special effects to your shots. Adobe’s app even offers extra filters and tools as in-app purchases you can buy to enhance the original free program. And when you get done improving your photos, save them back to the iPad’s Photos library, where you can easily email them or upload them to the Web right from your tablet, no desktop or laptop computer required.
Tip
As you may have guessed, Adobe Photoshop Express for the iPad is a member of Adobe’s large family of photo-editing software. Other members of the clan include Adobe Photoshop Express for iPhone and iPod Touch, Adobe Photoshop Elements for home users with Mac and Windows systems, and the mighty Adobe Photoshop for Mac and Windows, the industry standard for professional image-editing. Adobe also runs Photoshop.com, an online gallery and editing site. In fact, if you sign up for a free account at Photoshop.com, you get 2 free gigabytes of space on Adobe’s servers to show off your uploaded photos, whether you spruced them up on the iPad or not.
Play Slideshows on Your iPad
A photo slideshow takes all the photo tap-and-drag work out of your hands, freeing you up to sit back and admire your pictures without distraction. To run a slideshow on your iPad, you need to set up a few things, like how long each photo appears on-screen and what music accompanies your photo parade.
The iPad keeps its slideshow settings in two different places. All of the timing and order-of-pic options are in the iPad’s Settings area. To get there, tap Settings→Photos. Here, you can choose:
Play Each Slide For… Pick the amount of time you want a picture to stay on-screen. You can choose 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 seconds (for those photography buffs with really long attention spans).
Repeat. Tap this setting to On if you want the slideshow to keep looping, starting over again after it plays through the first time.
Shuffle. To randomly mix up the order of the pictures in an album, tap the On button next to “Shuffle.”
Note
Looking for info on the iPad’s native photo-related apps like Camera, Photo Booth, and FaceTime? Just flip back to Chapter 6—they’re all there.
Now that you have these matters worked out, go back to the Photos app and tap open the album you want to present as a slideshow. On the upper-right side of the menu bar, tap the Slideshow button. As you can see from the image above, the Slideshow Options box unfolds. Here, you can choose:
Once you make all your selections, you’re ready for showtime. Tap the Start Slideshow button. To stop the show, tap the iPad screen.
Play Slideshows on Your TV
You have a couple ways to get your photos flipping across a TV screen. For one, you can wirelessly stream them with AirPlay to a connected second-generation Apple TV box (Stream iPad Files With AirPlay). The other way is to connect the tablet to the TV with a cable (flip back to Play iPad Videos on Your TV for help connecting your iPad to a television set).
Once you make the iPad-TV link, you’re almost ready to start the show. You need to adjust a few more things on the iPad.
Tap Settings→Video. When you connect an Apple-approved AV cable to the iPad, your slideshow automatically appears on your TV set instead of on your tablet. In the TV Out section here, you can toggle Widescreen On or Off, depending on the type of TV screen you have.
In the TV Signal area, select your local television broadcast standard. If you’re in North America or Japan, choose NTSC. If you’re in Europe or Australia, choose PAL.
Tip
If you wrangle your picture collection in iPhoto ’09 or later on the Mac, you can export your intricately crafted and scored iPhoto slideshows as little movies sized up just for the iPad—and put them right into iTunes. Select a slideshow in iPhoto and click the Export button. In the “Export your slideshow” box that appears, turn on the checkbox for Medium or Large (the preferred settings for iPad viewing) and make sure you turn on the checkbox next to “Automatically send slideshow to iTunes.” Click the Export button. To actually complete the transfer, connect your iPad to your computer and click the Movies tab on the iPad preferences screen in iTunes. Select the slideshow and sync away.
Turn on your TV and select the iPad as your video input source. You do that the same way you tell your TV to display the signal from a DVD player or videogame console: Typically, you press the Input or Display button on your TV’s remote to switch from the live TV signal to a new video source.
On the iPad, navigate to the album you want. Press the Slideshow button in the menu bar at the top of the screen, tap the Start Slideshow button, and the show begins.
Tip
Apple sells its own AV cables (shown at left) for either component or composite video connections between the iPad and the input jacks on your TV or AV receiver. The cables are $49. If you want to hook up the iPad to a TV, computer monitor, or projector that uses a VGA connection, you can get the $29 Dock Connector to VGA Adapter. And if you have a high-definition TV and want to pipe in whatever happens to be on the iPad screen at the time over an HDMI cable, Apple’s $39 Digital AV Adapter will do the trick—they’re all conveniently available in Apple’s stores or online at store.apple.com.
Change the iPad’s Wallpaper
The iPad comes pre-stocked with several gorgeous high-resolution photos—mostly of nature scenes and textured patterns intended as background images for both the Lock and Home screens. (In case you’re wondering what the difference is, the Lock screen is the one you see when you first turn on the iPad, and the Home screen has all your app icons scattered about.)
If you want to change these background images to spice things up, you can assign new photos in two ways.
The first is to go to the Home screen and tap Settings→Brightness & Wallpaper. Tap the Wallpaper icon (circled). On the next screen, choose a photo from any of your photo albums, or tap Wallpaper to pick an Apple stock shot. Tap the photo you want to use. You can drag the image around and finger-pinch and spread to shrink or enlarge the parts of the picture you want to display.
When you’re done, tap the appropriate button at the top of the screen. You have your choice of Set Lock Screen, Set Home Screen, or Set Both. You can also bail out with a Cancel button in the left corner.
The second way to wallpaper your ‘Pad is to pick a picture out of one of the iPad’s
photo albums and tap the icon at the top of the screen, then tap the “Use as Wallpaper” option.
Here, you can size and save the photo as mentioned above. No matter which way you choose to
change it, there’s nothing like fresh new wallpaper to personalize your iPad—and show off
your own photography.
Turn the iPad into a Picture Frame
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the iPad resembles a digital picture frame. And if you want one of those, you can turn the iPad’s Lock screen into a 10-inch window that displays your photo collection, a pleasant diversion as the iPad recharges from a wall outlet.
Go to the Home screen and tap Settings→Picture Frame.
Pick the type of transition between photos you want to use—either the traditional Hollywood-style “Dissolve” or Apple’s new foldy-paper “Origami” animation. You can also set the amount of time each photo stays on-screen, whether the iPad zooms in on photos, and whether the pics appear in random order.
At the bottom of the Settings screen, choose the album of images you want to use—or let the iPad grab all the photos you added to it.
To test out your framed slideshow, press the Sleep/Wake button to turn off the iPad screen and press it again to get back to the Lock screen. Tap the small flower icon next to the lock slider to start the slideshow. If you want to pause the pictures, tap the iPad’s screen. You can either tap the flower icon again to resume the show, or swipe the slider to unlock the iPad and get back to work.
