Handling photos in Apple eco-sphere

This is a summary of the way you can store and transfer iPhone or other photos to an iPad.

MacBook

By wire.

Photos are stored on a MacBook in one of two programs, Aperture or iPhoto. You get the photos into the programs by connecting your iPhone/camera to the USB on the MacBook, the camera will appear in the side bar, import from there. If you just want to delete the photos on your camera you can use the Image Capture program or, one by one, using the Photos app directly on an iPhone (which is very tedious).

By WiFi

Another way of copying the photos is to use an app called Photosync. This runs on both the MacBook and the iPad/iPhone. It can copy photos between any two devices by local WiFi. The only problem is that Photosync cannot delete the photos after copying, so you have to plug in the iPhone and use Image Capture to delete them or, again one by one, using the Photos app.

This is the general scheme of things:

Aperture to iPad

1. Using iTunes to sync the photos. Connect the iPad by wire to the MacBook, open iTunes, chose the iPad and the tab 'photos'. Select which albums you want to sync, then hit sync.

The photos albums will be copied to the iPad Photos program.

2. Using Mobile Me. Chose an album in Aperture (or iPhoto) and hit the Mobile Me button. This will create an album on, MOBILE ME / Album name, and start a copy of the photos to the Mobile Me cloud.

The photos in the cloud can be viewed using the iPad/iPhone Gallery app.

Photos can be added to any Mobile Me gallery from iPhoto or Aperture.

Viewing the photos

Photo App

Using the iPad Photos app you chose an Album, this displays thumbnails of all the photos inside it. If you chose a photo this will be shown full screen.

You can swipe left/right to view other photos in the album.

There are two icons in the menu bar:

1. Airplay to Apple TV, which will show your photos on your TV

2. Other actions. Here you can: email the photo, upload to Mobile Me, chose to use as a contact's photo, use as wallpaper, print (you need an HP printer or Printopia software installed on the MacBook), or copy the photo, for pasting in another program (e.g. Pages, Keynote...)

Gallery App

The Gallery app connects you to the photos in the Mobile Me cloud. Your photos are in My Gallery. You can also connect to the galleries of any friends who use Mobile me. When you chose a gallery the thumbnails of the photos will be displayed, chose one, then you can swipe right or left, run a slideshow or email a link to the file..

Friends can view your gallery at gallery.me.com/your_user_name.