Viewing photos and creating your own slideshows

 Learn about the Photos app and the iPad's Picture Frame feature

AS SOON AS YOU SEE THE GORGEOUS iPAD DISPLAY,

you know that it's going to be just perfect for photos. The photographs you sync with your desktop or laptop computer (along with screen grabs taken by pressing the Home and Sleep buttons together, and images saved to your iPad by apps) are all made available in Photos.

Photos is another example of an iPad app that's more or less a direct translation of its iPhone sibling, but on the iPad the experience has been boosted byan order of magnitude, thanks to the largerscreen and a few additional touches. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the iPad Photos app is how fun and tactile it feels. By contrast, the iPhone's Photos app, with its rigid scrolling, feels quite sterile.

Although the iPhone app's gestures - tap to open, back buttons to close/go up one level in the hierarchy-work with the iPad Photos app, you can also rapidly spread two fingers over an album or image to open it, or quickly pinch to close something. When you have a photo displayed full-screen and tap it, a scrubbing bar appears, making it easy to rapidly navigate huge albums and find the photo you want.

In addition to these features, both the Photos app and the iPad's lock screen enable you to create configurable slide shows. This means that your iPad not only makes a great digital photo album, but is also, during 'downtime', a first-rate digital photo frame.




KIT LIST:

■ iPad with some pictures stored

Time required: 10 mins
Difficulty: Beginner

 Access all areas

The main toolbar provides access to all your photos, albums and any geo-tagged images.

Fun with gestures

Although you can tap and use 'back' buttons to navigate Photos, it's far more fun to use pinch and spread gestures.

Fast response

One of the most amazing things about the Photos app is its speed - even when scrotling hundreds of images, It responds almost instantly.

 1 View photo albums Albums kept in sync via iTunes are shown by default, or when you click the 'Albums' button. 'Saved Photos' houses screen grabs taken on the iPad and images saved by apps.

 2 Peek within Each album is represented by a pile of photos, which you can peek inside using a 'spread' gesture. Move your fingers from the screen and the pile returns to its starting point.

 3 Explore an album Tap a pile (or do a kind of 'flick spread') and the entire album is displayed. If there are too many thumbnails for the screen, you can drag- or flick-scroll vertically.

 4 View images Tap an image for a full-screen view. Tap again to see controls and info. Swipe to see the next or previous image. For faster navigation, use the scrub bar at the bottom.

 5 Use actions Perform actions on the current image (email, assign to a contact, use as wallpaper, copy) by tapping the button at the top right of the screen and making a selection.

 6 Create a slideshow Tap the 'Slideshow' button for slideshow options. Define whether you want music and what kind of transition you'd like between images, and then tap 'Start Slideshow',

 

7 View all photos Back at the albums

screen [tap the top-left button or pinch a couple of times to get to it), tap the 'Photos' button for a view that shows all of the photos on your iPad.

 Slideshows  

If you like slideshows, take a trip to the Settings app. In the 'Photos' section, you can define how long each image is displayed in Photos app slideshows, along with whether slideshows repeat or shuffle. Select 'Picture Frame' to define options for slideshows activated by the picture-frame button on the iPad's lock screen. Tap 'Albums' to select albums for inclusion; alternatively, 'All Photos' makes the slideshow use all of your images.

8 Examine places If you have geo-tagged photos, tap the 'Places' button. You'll see pins where photos have been taken. Tap a pin to see a pile of photos from that location.