Exporting photos to iPad

[devenh]

Thinking about purchasing an iPad, but before I do, I wondered how one goes about exporting selected images from a Windows 7 PC to the iPad and how PM comes into play?  What resolution is best to export?  How much memory is recommended on the iPad?

Thanks,

Deven

[FVlcek]

Hi, you export photos through iTunes (unless you were to use Mac and iCloud photo storage from Apple). You simply tell iTunes  which folder to sync with the iPad, and it syncs all photos in that folder and subfolders, organised by folder names (at least the first layer of subfolders,probably). That means folder names in your photo folder becomes album names on the iPad.

Second, iTunes resaves and scales the photos it transfers to iPad, if they are bigger, to 2304 x 1536 pixels and some arbitrary jpeg compression level. Given that iPad screen res is 1024x768, should be still enough for some zoom to details.

How PM comes into this - simply. As I use it for all my organising, I have a Save As snaphshot in PM called Save to iDevice, which simply scales the photos to some size and smaller filesize (because I do not need 10MB jpegs in my iTunes photo sync folder), and saves them to that iTunes sync folder. Next time I connect the iPad to my computer, it syncs all photos inside that folder to the iPad.

That's the Apple's way, using only their own apps and the photos end up on the iPad inside its native Photo library.

However, there are also ways using other apps, downloaded from apple's appstore. I am sure there are some that allow you to copy photos from your computer to iPad at even bigger sizes, either though wi-fi, or perhaps their companion PC app and wi-fi, or their own iTunes interface (iTunes, when you have an app installed on the iPad which can accept files, allows you to copy files to that app only - for example many eBook and productivity apps allow you to import PDFs directly to them that way). However, I find that a bit cumbersome - because the photos are then stored and visible only in that single app. I do not mind the resolution restriction of the iTunes sync (2304 x 1536px) any problem.

Mind you, I am on a Mac, but all this should apply to PC iTunes as well.

Feel free to ask more if you need. Frantisek

[devenh]

Thanks, that is very helpful.

Couple of more questions if you don't mind:

1. Is the sync folder one big folder or can it have subdirectories like \2011\travel\canada?

2. How much memory does your iPad have and do think that is enough?

Deven

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Deven,

I use PM to export my photos to my iPod, just like Frantisek explained. To answer your questions from my experience

1. You can use one level of folders. In your case e.g., 2010, 2011, etc. Each folder basically becomes an album. You can't have subfolders within your folders.

2. How many images do you intend to store on your iPad? The jpgs are only small so you can store quite a number on even the smallest iPad.

Hope this helps,
Hayo

[devenh]

Hayo,

How much memory do you have on your iPad and is it enough?

Deven

[FVlcek]

Hi Deven, AFAIK the JPEGs you sync via iTunes to your iPad are around (more or less) 1MB compressed at the 2304px long side. Can't check today though. So you could work from that. Of course, you could use the iPad as sort of photo storage (either via Eye-Fi wifi SD card and Shuttersnitch app, which allows you to transfer and work with photos directly from your camera on your iDevice, or Apple's Camera Connection kit), but with abundance of cheap memory cards and most pro cameras having two card slots, I think that would be a rarely used scenario - to back up the whole shoot it's easier to just shoot on two cards in the first place. So via Shuttersnitch I transfer only selects for immediate publishing, not the whole shoot. So I guess the question is, what else would you have on the iPad... HD movies for the plane or train, et cetera, would take up most space. So the minimum iPad size would depend a lot on your requirements of it. Do you want to have a significant amount of photos from your archive on it for display? Work with the aprox. file size given above. Will you be transfering full size originals to your iPad and leaving them there a longer time? Think about how much that will take (plus the Camera connection kit generates a smaller size preview photos for displaying for each photo you transfer through it, but these should take around 1MB again). Travel a lot on plane/train and want to have a bigger assortment of movies there? 720p movies would take a lot of space each - at least 1GB I think (my iPhone optimised movies are around 300MB, at acceptable visual quality, and half the resolution of 720p). And you should really leave some safety margin, so the device has enough free space for its own internal workings as well.

[devenh]

I'm not going to be downloading photos from my camera to the iPad -- well not until PM is available for iOS    Rather, I just want to use the iPad to show my galleries.

Deven

[vAfotoriporter]

I use the very same method sync with iTunes to have my photos sorted in first level folders.

The other and yet simple option I use is the DropBox as a cloud storage. All files you put in the DropBox folder on your computer(s) you install their application is automatically synced to the cloud where you can reach them from your iOS device too via the DropBox iOS app.

But there are portfolio applications as well specifically designed for the purpose to load your photos in it, set up different types of sortings and allow for easy browsing.

Adobe also introduced its cloud service that is aimed to sync photos across iPads, iPhones and desktop computers even with LR.

Or you can set up a nice website - preferably iOS compatible so that negates all Flash content - and simply browse that on your iPad.

[Hayo Baan]

How much memory do you have on your iPad and is it enough?

Hi Deven, it's an iPod Touch actually, not an iPad. It has 32GB which is filled with my music collection for the most part; the ±250 images take up less than a 100MB (!). They were resized to 960 pixels max, before uploading. 960x640 being double the native screen size of my iPod Touch (half of the current iPhone and iPod Touch).

The iPad has a bigger screen (1024x768) so you should use differently sized files. Assuming you go to e.g., 2048x1536 max, you'd end up with files up to 5.1 times bigger (2048*1536 is 5 times as many pixels as 960x640), so 250 files would take up say 0.5GB, or 2MB per file. So even if you go for the smallest iPad (16GB), you still would be able to store up to 8000 images, plenty I'd say :-)

Hope this helps,
Hayo

[vAfotoriporter]

I too failed to answer the capacity question. I have 16GB iPhone 4 (not the new 4Gs) and 16GB iPad (first gen without the camera and no 3G either). It seems me perfect for most of the time. Main part of the memory is filled with podcasts, musics, and videos that I almost never watch except for long journeys.
However it happened I could not install a new navigation app because I ran out of available space.
I also ran into the error of filling up the iPad with videos downloaded from cards from my video camera. Don't forget there is not too much space to download 4GB cards to a 16GB iPad especially when you have other stuff on the iPad too...

If you select well what you need on the iPad, not fill it with useless junk and consider what you want to use it for then even the smaller ones can serve well. Also the more free space is the better so if you have the extra money you won't loose with too much empty space on the iPad - you can allways fill it up with even more movies or music that really consumes it.
Photos don't really take much space on an iPad if you use it for display and not as a downloading tool.