Going on a trip? Don't bring your laptop. The iPad works just as well as a photo editing and uploader tool, so you can get those vacation photos from your SD card up to Facebook in no time. All you need is the iPad, the camera connection kit and a speedy Wi-Fi (or, if you sprang for the mobile contract, 3G) connection and you'll have your friends envying your trip to sunshine land in no time.
One tool you'll need if you want edit your photos without a computer is Apple's camera connection kit for iPad. At only $29, it won't break the bank and it really will make getting photos onto your iPad a breeze (not to mention allow you to use a bunch of other cool peripherals, if you haven't upgraded to iOS 4.2 yet). The kit comes with two dongles; one for a standard SD card, and one for a standard USB cable. If you shoot with a DSLR, it's likely that you have a CompactFlash card and will need to use a USB cable with the latter.
The iPad can recognize both the RAW and JPEG files your camera saves, and the upload process is pretty simple; plug in your camera to the connection dongle, and Photos will automatically ask you which photos you want to import. Just as iPhoto does, it will also allow you to delete all the files you have imported, to free up space on your memory card.
Photos automatically creates albums for "Imported" and "Last Imported" photos. It only displays JPEG files. However, the RAW files will show up once you hook up your iPad to your Mac.
Editing is, of course, what makes the iPad great for on the go. There are a few offerings in the app store that will do the job, but we feel the simpler, the better. That's why our first recommendation for editing your photos on the iPad is the free option -- Photoshop Express.
As you would expect from Adobe, Photoshop Express is a simple and intuitive photo editor that allows users to edit and adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, and sharpness. While the sliding scale controls aren't super precise, the results are great. And, best of all, it's free!
Photoshop Express only has one major flaw. If you edit too much and try to save a huge photo, the app will consistently crash. So, for power users, we recommend Photogene, as described below.
If you're going to pay for one app to edit photos with, we recommend Photogene. This app has been around for ages -- since the early iPhone days--and it shows. Photogene does it all. It allows users to adjust exposure, saturation, contrast, color, shadows, sharpness, noise, and curves, and comes with a few other fancy features you probably don't need if you just want to get your photos looking good (frames, for instance).
Unlike Photoshop express, Photogene shows a photo's metadata (the settings and camera with which the photo was taken) and allows users to export at various resolutions. The app also does not crash with large exports. If you're serious about editing photos with your iPad, we hands down recommend Photogene. It's only $3.99 in the app store.
Not super interested in carefully editing your photos, but just want some cool Lomo effects? As we've mentioned before, Instagram is probably our favorite iPhone app for the task. And, iPhone apps make great photo editing tools for the iPad, too.
As much as we might not want to admit it, we love sharing our photos on services like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Twitter is pretty easy, since we're only sharing one photo at a time. On Facebook or Flickr, however, we usually want to share dozens, and assign an album for each. Here are a few iPad apps that make that final task a little easier.
There are a lot of great Flickr apps for the iPad, but none of them make sharing all that easy. Neither solution is perfect, but we have two recommendations; either Mobile Fotos, or the iPhone version of the official Flickr app, which is not yet available for iPad.
Mobile Fotos is a great Flickr app, but only allows you to tag and upload one photo at a time. Its saving grace is that it actually remembers the tags, sets, and titles of the last photo you have uploaded. It isn't perfect, however, since you can't select multiple photos, but at least you can count on the photos uploading successfully -- no need to wait for one to finish. It'll only set you back $2.99, and is a must have for the more organized Flickr uploader.
The official Flickr app actually supports true batch uploading and has the added benefit of being free. Unfortunately, it does not allow batch tagging or information entry, so if you're an organized Flickr user you'll have to manually add each photo to the set it belongs in. You'll also have to manually add tags and titles to each individual photo. But, if you don't care about tags and sets, or have mastered the iPhone keyboard, this app is the way to go.
In an ideal world, the official Facebook app would be available for iPad and support batch uploading. For now however, we recommend the iPhone version of the Facebook app. Despite its low resolution, it does a good job actually uploading photos and it lets you directly access your individual albums, as well as tag your friends. Unfortunately, you can only upload one photo at a time.
If you're looking for a batch uploader, Photoloader gets the job done. The app lets you create new albums, add photos to existing albums, add captions, and even adjust the order in which your photos appear. Unfortunately, you can't tag your friends, but the trade off is you can upload your photos in bulk.
While photo editing and uploading on the iPad isn't as perfect as it might be on your Mac, we found it really freeing to get so much done so effectively with our little iPads, and it made our vacation a lot more fun. We hope by using this guide you feel the same!
Jen Harley
January 24, 2013 at 8:17am
iPhoto for iPad is a great option for editing also. As far as batch uploading to Flickr, I use Flickr Studio.
DJ Rizzo
January 28, 2011 at 3:25pm
I have a lot of professional photographers looking for a solution beyond the built in Photos.app for sharing their portfolio. Any recommendations?
aluehrmann
January 18, 2011 at 4:16pm
That's fine, but what I want is to be able to add text descriptions to the metadata, AND be able to transfer the edited photos to iPhoto on my iMac along with the text. Any ideas?
