In my last newsletter, I opened the floor for questions on any topic I might be able to answer. It could be about photography, iPhones, art fairs, writing, life balance, creative process… Whatever is on your mind. This is the first of the Q&A. If you have a question, send it to me, and I’ll answer it in a future post.
Helen from Boston asks:
I have a Canon point and shoot and an iPad. I use picasa for photo organization and editing. I’ve used snapseed for a few years, but the iPad just isn’t part of my photography work flow. Any tips for accessing my photo library from my apps?
This is a great question, Helen! Not everyone has an iPhone or wants it to be their primary camera, but if you have an iPad you can still download the apps and try out all of the editing techniques I share in the Mobile Tutorials.
The first item of business is getting the files onto your iPad Camera Roll. There are a couple of ways to do this:
1. Get them into the cloud, and then transfer them to your iPad. You can use my Dropbox transfer method to get your photos into the cloud and onto your iPad, or, if you already have your photos stored in the cloud, look for an app that has easy download access. A quick search on apps for Picasa revealed an app called Web Albums HD, which works with Picasa Web Albums. If you have Lightroom with the Adobe Creative Cloud, you can get the Lightroom for iPad app which says it enables seamless syncing between your device and desktop. (Great to know — I might just have to try that!)
2. Manually transfer the images to the iPad, through creating permanent albums which sync through iTunes or emailing yourself the images you want to edit. (Ugh!)
Creating a system which automatically syncs your images through the cloud and makes them available to download on the iPad would be much preferred if you want the iPad to be a regular part of your workflow. I’ve found if something is a lot of work, I might try it out once or twice, but I’m not going to make it a regular part of my process.
Once you have the image files on the iPad, be aware that some apps limit the types and sizes of files they allow you to import. If you are having trouble with loading a file into an app, it may be because it’s not a supported file type or the file size is too large. If it’s a file type problem, open and re-save the file using Snapseed, which opens most file types. If the file size is too big, use the Reduce app to make it smaller.
I hope this helps! Thanks for your question Helen. I’m sure there are others who have a similar challenge.
Do you have a question for a Q&A post? Drop me a note! It can be about anything.
