TO MOVE PICTURES TO your ’Pod, you need a computer loaded with iTunes and an iPod outfitted with a screen—sorry, Shuffle owners, the photos thing is just not happening for you, but you probably knew that already.

Even with a photos-compatible iPod in tow, you need a couple of other things to make your pictures portable:

There are a couple of other things to remember when you add images to your iPod. For one, you can’t import pictures from one of those photo CDs from the drugstore or from a backup disc you made yourself. Photos you store on DVDs or CDs won’t cut it, either. iTunes needs to pull photos directly from your hard drive. The solution in both cases? Transfer your pics from the disc to your computer so they’re ready for your iPod.

When it comes to photos, the iPod allies itself with just a single computer. That means that, unlike manual music management, where you can grab songs from several different computers, you can only synchronize pictures between one iPod and one computer. If you ignore the warning box (above) and try to load photos from a different computer, iTunes replaces all your iPod’s existing photos with the pictures from that new machine. Ouch.

You also can’t dump photos directly into the iPod from your digital camera—you need to go through iTunes. (There used to be a handy gadget called the iPod Camera Connector that siphoned photos from your camera’s memory card to the iPod’s hard drive, but it doesn’t work on modern iPods, nor does Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit. One can only hope that a variation of this device comes out for the iPod Touch/iPhone one of these days….)

OKAY, SO YOU’VE GOT your screen-outfitted iPod and a bunch of pictures in an iTunes-friendly format on your hard drive. How do you get those photos from your drive to your iPod? The same way you transfer music—through iTunes. First, you need to set your preferences in iTunes and on the iPod so they sync just the photos you want to carry around, like so:

If you don’t use a photo-management program and just want to copy a folder of photos from your hard drive to your iPod, select “Choose folder” from the menu and navigate to the desired folder. Then decide whether you want to sync just the free-floating photos in that folder, or the free-floating photos and any photos tucked away in folders inside the folder.

If you use a photo-management program, select it, and then select the “All photos and albums” option to have iTunes haul every single image in your photo program’s library over to your iPod. If you don’t want to copy over those bachelorette-party snaps, opt for “Selected albums” and choose only the folders you want from your photo program. (Of course, you need to make sure those party pics aren’t in any of those folders.)

If you use a Mac with iPhoto ‘09 or later and take advantage of the program’s face-recognition feature, you can also sync photos according to who’s in the pictures. Scroll down the photo-sync preferences page to the Faces area and turn on the checkboxes next to the names of your favorite people. You can sync iPhoto Events (typically, photos taken on the same day) here as well.

Whenever you connect your iPod to your computer, iTunes syncs the photo groups you designate, copying any new pictures you added to the groups since you last connected. During the process, iTunes displays an “Analyzing…” message in its status window, like the one shown here.

Don’t let the term “analyzing” scare you: iTunes hasn’t taken it upon itself to judge your photographic efforts. The program simply creates versions of your pictures that look good on anything from your tiny iPod screen to your big TV screen (in case you want to connect your iPod to it).

Want to get certain albums or photos off of your iPod? Reconnect it to iTunes, go back to the Photos tab, deselect the albums you no longer want, and then sync up. If you want to banish individual pictures, remove them from your desktop album and sync. On the iPod Touch, you can delete photos in the Camera Roll album by tapping , selecting the images to go, and then tapping Delete.

WITH ITS BIG COLOR screen, the iPod Touch shows off your photos better than other iPods—and lets you have more fun viewing them because it’s literally a hands-on experience.

To see the pictures synced from your computer, tap the Photos icon on the Home screen. Tap the buttons in the bottom row to see photos grouped by Albums, Photo Stream, Faces, or Places. Tap an album title, name, or place to see thumbnails of those photos. To get back to your library, tap the Albums (or whatever) button at the top-left of the screen.

To see a full-screen version of a picture, tap its thumbnail image. The Touch displays photo controls for a few seconds; tap the photo to make them go away (tap it again to make them reappear). Double-tap a photo to magnify it. You can also rotate the Touch so that horizontal photos fill the width of the screen instead of getting letterboxed. (In Edit mode, you can also make basic fixes to your pictures, like cropping out unwanted parts or taming red-eye in your subjects. Editing Photos on the Touch has details.)

Here are some other things you can do with your photos on the Touch:

As mentioned earlier, tapping with a single photo on-screen attaches that image to an email message; tapping the Edit button on the thumbnails screen lets you attach multiple photos to a message. Tap the thumbnails of all the pics you want to send, tap Share→Mail, type in an address, add a note, and then tap Send.

ONCE YOU GET YOUR photos freed from the confines of your computer and onto your Nano or Classic, you probably want to show them off to friends and relatives—or admire them yourself when you’re stuck on a train or traveling far from home. Here’s how to get a palm-sized picture show:

iPod Nano

Tap the Photos icon on the Nano’s Home screen to call up a list of your photo albums, along with an “All Photos” option. Select an album and flick up or down to see all the thumbnails in it. Tap a thumbnail to see a picture full-screen. Flick your finger on the screen from right to left to glide through the images.

Double-tap a picture to zoom in and out of it. To see more of a photo while you’re zoomed in, drag your finger on the screen to pull a different part of the picture to the center. You can also use the “pinch and zoom” moves (described in Chapter 7) to zoom in on a particular part of a photo if double-tapping doesn’t get you there.

You can tap the screen once to call up the navigation controls, which give you a button that starts an automatic slideshow (Play Slideshows on Your iPod), and and arrows so you can advance through an album at your own pace.

The control bar also has a small square grid icon in the top-left corner; tap it to go back to all the thumbnail photos in that particular album. To get back to your list of Nano photo albums, swipe the screen from left to right.

iPod Classic

Choose Photos→All Photos (or select an album) from your Classic’s main menu to see a screen of thumbnail images. Use the scroll wheel to maneuver the little yellow highlight box, and then zoom along the rows until you get to the pic you want. If you have hundreds of pee-wee pics, tap the Previous and Next buttons to advance or retreat through the thumbnails by the screenful. Highlight a photo and press the center button to call up a large version of it. Press the Previous and Next buttons—or scroll the click wheel—to move through pics one by one. Press Menu to return to the full album.

WHEN ITUNES OPTIMIZES YOUR photos for iPodification, it streamlines the images a bit instead of transferring the big, full-resolution files. But if you want the high-res photos, you can copy them over to your Nano or Classic—good news if you’re an avid photographer and want to haul a big, print-ready photo collection from one machine to another. (Sorry Touch owners, you can’t enable your iPods to work as external hard drives without third-party software.)

Nano and Classic users can follow these steps:

After you sync, full-resolution copies of your photos land in the Photos folder on your iPod’s drive. (The Photos folder also includes a subfolder called Thumbs that’s full of iPod-optimized images in special .ithmb format; you can safely ignore these.) Now connect your iPod to another computer, open its Photos folder, and copy the full-res photos over to the second computer.

A PHOTO SLIDESHOW TAKES all the click-and-tap work out of showcasing your images, freeing you up to admire your pictures without distraction. To run a slideshow on an iPod, you need to make some decisions, like how long each photo appears on-screen and what music accompanies your trip to Disneyland.

Slideshow Settings on an iPod Touch or Nano

To customize the way photos slide by on your Touch or Nano, press the Home button and then tap Settings→Photos. Now set some options:

• How long each picture stays on-screen. Tap the time shown to get a menu of choices, which includes 2, 3, 5, 10, or 20 seconds per shot.

• The transition between photos. As mentioned on View Photos on the iPod Touch, the Touch keeps Hollywood-style dissolves, wipes, and ripples ready to select when you tap the button on a selected photo in the album. (The Nano doesn’t offer any slideshow transitions.)

You can also choose to have the iPod shuffle your photos in random order or repeat a slideshow when it ends, so that it loops until you manually stop it. The Touch’s photo settings, shown above left, also hold a switch you can flip to turn on the Photo Stream feature of Apple’s iCloud service; Share and Stream Photos With iCloud has more.

Note

The iPod Nano doesn’t include a slideshow music option in its Settings menu. To get a soundtrack going for Nano Theater, go to the Home screen, tap the Music icon, and then tap up a song or playlist. When the music starts, jump back to Photos and start your slideshow. It’s a little clunky, but then again, you’re watching a slideshow on a screen that’s about the size of a postage-stamp book.

Slideshow Settings on the iPod Classic

YOU SET SLIDESHOW OPTIONS on the Classic by choosing Photos→Settings. You’ll see a slew of options ready to shape your slideshow experience.

• Use the Time Per Slide menu to set how much time (from 2 to 20 seconds) each photo stays on-screen. During the show, you can also go to the next image with a tap of the click wheel.

• Use the Music menu to pick a song from your iPod’s playlists to serve as the soundtrack for your show (assuming you want one). You may even want to create a playlist in iTunes for a particular slideshow.

• As with music tracks, you can shuffle the order of your photos and repeat the slideshow. You can also add fancy transitions by choosing Photos→Settings→Transitions. You get to pick from several dramatic photo-changing styles, including effects that let you zoom out and fade to black.

• To make sure your slideshow plays on your iPod’s screen, turn the TV Out setting to Off, which directs the video signal to your iPod. Alternatively, you can select Ask, so that each time you start a slideshow, the iPod inquires whether you intend to display it on the big or small screen. (Turn the page if you want to project your slideshow on a TV.)

Once you get the settings the way you want them, select the album or photo you want to start the show with, and then press the Play/Pause button on the click wheel. Press Play/Pause again to temporarily stop the show, and press it again to continue.

The show’s time per slide, music, and transitions should all match the settings you chose. All you have to do now is sit back, relax, and enjoy your handiwork.

TO SEE YOUR DIGITAL goodies on the big screen, you first need to connect your TV and iPod (Touch or Classic only; sorry, Nano owners, your model can’t do this). Flip back to the previous chapter if you need help connecting. Once you make the iPod-TV link, you need to adjust a few more settings on your iPod.

For the iPod Touch

1. Connect your Touch to the TV. If you have a fifth-generation iPod Touch with the Lightning port, you can use an HDMI cable and the Lightning Digital AV Adapter. If you have the older, fourth-generation Touch with the Dock Connector jack, you can use Apple’s Composite AV Cable or Component AV Cable. When you connect your Touch, your slideshow automatically appears on your TV instead of on your iPod. Third-party AV cables may also work, but make sure they’re approved for your particular Touch model. Touch owners who also have a second- or third-generation Apple TV can ditch the cable and connect with AirPlay (View Video and Photos with Apple TV).

2. Turn on your TV and select your iPod as the video source. You tell your TV to use the iPod as the video source the same way you tell it to display the signal from a DVD player or game console: Typically, you press the Input or Display button on your TV’s remote to change from the live TV signal to a new video source.

3. On the iPod, navigate to the album you want. Tap the photo you want to start with, and then tap the Play triangle at the bottom of the screen to begin your show.

For the iPod Classic

1. Choose Photos→Settings→TV Out→On. The On option tells your Classic to send the slideshow out to a TV screen instead of playing it on its own screen. (You can change your iPod’s Ask setting so that it always asks you which screen you want to use; see Slideshow Settings on the iPod Classic.) If you have a Classic or older Nano and use one of Apple’s AV cables, TV Out gets set to On automatically.

2. Select your local television broadcast standard. If you’re in North America or Japan, choose Photos→Settings→TV Signal→NTSC. If you’re in Europe or Australia, choose Photos→Settings→TV Signal→PAL. If you’re in an area not listed above, check your television’s manual to see what standard it uses or search the Web for “world television standards.”

3. Turn on your TV and select your iPod as the video source. You select your iPod as the video source the same way you tell your TV to display video from a DVD player or game console: Typically, you press the Input or Display button on your TV’s remote to change from a live TV signal to a new video source.

Now, cue up a slideshow on the Classic and press the Play/Pause button. Your glorious photographs—scored to the sounds of your selected music, if you wish—appear on your television screen. (Because television screens are horizontal displays, vertical shots end up with black bars along the sides.)

Your pre-selected slideshow settings control the show, though you can advance through it manually with your thumb on the click wheel. If you have the $59 Apple Universal Dock, you can also pop through shots with a click of its remote control. Although just one photo appears at a time on the TV, if you’re driving the Classic, your iPod displays not only the current picture, but the one before and after it as well, letting you narrate your show with professional smoothness: “OK, this is Shalimar before we got her fur shaved off after the syrup incident…and here she is later.”

Note

As explained in the previous chapter, the type of iPod you have dictates the equipment you need to display photos and videos on your TV. To find out the requirements for your model iPod, visit http://store.apple.com and click the Cables & Docks link. The page for each product lists compatible iPod models. Third-party iPod accessory sites should also list the models each item works with—something you need to pay close attention to now that iPods can have either a Lightning port or the older Dock Connector.

The iPod Touch can take photos, but so can iPhones, iPads, and, of course, digital cameras. But wouldn’t it be great if you could somehow get all the photos taken on all those devices in one place? With iCloud’s Photo Stream, you can.

With Photo Stream in action, iCloud stores the last 1,000 pictures you’ve taken for 30 days, which should give you plenty of time to sync your pics across all your devices and, most importantly, to your desktop computer, which serves as the archive for your gallery. So, while iCloud holds only your last thousand shots up in the sky, all your pictures are permanently stored on your Windows PC or Mac—which probably has a bit more storage space than your Touch.

To use Photo Stream, you have to activate it on your Touch, on your other iOS devices, and on your desktop computer. If you didn’t turn on Photo Stream when you set up your Touch (Set Up and Activate Your Touch), go to the Home screen and tap Settings→iCloud→Photo Stream→On. Repeat this step on all the iOS 5 or iOS 6 devices that you want to paddle along in the Stream. (You can also turn on Photo Stream by tapping Settings→Photos & Camera→Photo Stream→On.)

Once your iOS devices are ready, you need to bring your computer into the Photo Stream mix so it can serve as the archive of all your full-quality photos.

Photo Stream for Windows

If you use a Windows PC, you first need to install the iCloud software for Windows; download it from Apple at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1455. Once you get the iCloud software installed, choose Start→Control Panel→Network and Internet→iCloud. When the dialog box opens, type in your iCloud user name and password. Next, turn on the checkbox next to Photo Stream and click Options.

In the box that appears (shown right), you can turn on the Photo Stream feature, the option to share Photo Streams (see the next page), and select a folder for iCloud to use for moving all these photos around. By default, iCloud sets up a Photo Stream folder in your Windows Pictures library (specifically, in a subfolder called My Photo Stream). Click the Change button next to either folder to pick a different name. Click OK when you’re done and ready to start streaming photos to your computer and iOS devices.

Photo Stream for Mac OS X

Apple makes things a bit easier for its own operating system and computers. You just need to use the most recent version (and update) of its iPhoto ‘11 or Aperture programs for organizing and editing pictures. To turn on Photo Stream in either Mac program, click the Photo Stream icon in the left panel, and then click the Turn On Photo Stream button that appears in the window.

To see Photo Stream preferences in iPhoto (and adjust them if needed), choose iPhoto→Preferences→Photo Stream. In the Preferences box, (like the one below), turn on the checkbox next to My Photo Stream. You can also turn on checkboxes next to Automatic Import (which lets iPhoto include Photo Stream images in its Events, Photos, Faces, and Places albums) and Automatic Upload (which pushes the photos you import from your camera’s memory card up to iCloud, where smaller versions are dispatched to your iOS devices). You can also turn on Shared Photo Streams, as described below.

Share Your Photo Stream

Tired of emailing your photos to friends and family? If they’re all hooked into the iCloud Universe as well, you can share each other’s Photo Streams, which is like having a personal, private subscription to pictures you actually might want to see. Here’s how:

1. In your computer’s iCloud settings (shown on these pages), turn on Shared Photo Streams.

2. On the Touch, choose Settings→iCloud→Photo Stream→Shared Photo Streams→On.

3. On the Touch, tap Home→Photos→Photo Stream. Tap the button. Here, you invite other iOS 6 users to share your photos. Type a name for your shared album. (You can also turn on the Public Website option to display the photos on icloud.com).

4. Add one photo by tapping and choosing Photo Stream; add several by tapping Edit on the album screen, selecting the pics, and then tapping Share→Photo Stream. Tap to edit your Stream’s subscribers—or delete the shared stream entirely.