How do I import SD Card photos on my Apple iPad?

As a professional photographer in the field every week, I'm curious about how the new Apple iPad works as a photo import and management tool. Can I pull photos directly off the SDcard, and if so, how do they show up on the device itself? It'd be great to preview them with clients, that's for sure.

Dave's Answer:

When I give demonstrations of my own Apple iPad, I have to admit that it's the photo browser that I typically find impresses them the most, and I've gradually put more and more photos on the iPad as I've seen this happen. When the sdcard camera adapter device showed up from the back while I was at an Apple Store talking with one of the employees, well, I couldn't resist buying one to see what it could do...

As you might have learned, the Camera Connection Kit is actually two gizmos, one that lets you plug USB devices into an iPad, and the other of which is an SDcard reader, small and simple. You plug it in, slip an SDCard into the slot, and, well, that's what you're curious about, right? :-)

So here's what happened when I plugged an SD Card into the Camera Connection Kit gizmo hooked up to my iPad...

The Photo app is automatically launched and you see a new tab along the top, "Camera". Then there are tons of outlined photo thumbnails:

Give it a minute or two and you'll see all the photos previewed on the iPad and displayed neatly, as you'd expect:

At this point you can click on "Import All" and have all the photos sucked onto the iPad, or you can skim through the pics and import a subset of them by tapping on the best of them, then tapping on "Import" on the top right:

Turns out when you go to import your selected subset of photos, you get options:

Since I did pick a subset, I tap on "Import Selected" and the photos are imported from the SDcard onto the iPad, one by one. As it proceeds, photos that have been imported are shown with a green check mark (to differentiate from the earlier checkmark icon) and the photo being read has a spinning graphic:

When the import process is complete...

I'm paranoid, I never delete photos from the memory card until I've also got a copy on my main computer, but since it's easy to grab the pics off the iPad next time you've plugged it into your system (use Image Capture if it doesn't automatically launch a photo management app like Aperture), I'm sure it's safe to tap "Delete" here too.

Finally, once they're all imported, note that there are two new albums on the iPad: "Last Import" and "All Imported":

All in all, a simple, effective and pleasant experience and the photos look gorgeous on the iPad once they're brought in, a nice boon and a definite tactic for impressing your clients on site.

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Categorized: Apple iPad Help (Article 9428, Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: apple ipad, digital photography, import photos ipad, ipad camera connection kit
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Reader Comments To Date: 7

Ellie Arch said, on May 17, 2010 10:51 AM:

This really is a great blog you have here Dave...Quality information and tutorials to everyone's problems. I look forward to more...

Ellie

Clayton Curtis said, on December 31, 2010 7:13 PM:

Any secrets on how one efficiently selectively import large subsets of a large number of photos on an SD card? Tapping on many tens of images gets old FAST, and there doesn't seem to be any way to select a range of images.

oliver fenton said, on July 16, 2011 5:16 PM:

I have found the iPad 2 to be almost deliberately difficult to use and putting me off any Apple products. All I wish to do do is import various photographs for my wife's 60th party. I have put them all in to a file on an SD card - my computer (PC) would acknowledge the existence of said file, and allow me to open it. The iPad opens some irrelevent photos not in a file but refuses to acknowledge the existence of 4.5 Gb of other photos in other files. Is it so difficult? Any help appreciated, and, yes, I don't normally use Macs.

Oliver Fenton

Todd Jenest said, on August 4, 2011 2:31 PM:

Once I've imported the pictures from my SD Card gizmo to the iPad 2, I can't find them any more once the SD card is removed. Where did they go?

Thanks.

Raylee said, on June 24, 2012 12:58 PM:

I purchased a Camers Connection Kit off of Tmart and have used it exclusively to upload photos from my Canon camera. I have not had any problems doing this. I'm disappointed that the iPad is extremely limited in its editing abilities but I'll survive. Today, I tried to use the USB port in the kit to upload photos from my phone, NOT a smartphone. I have a micro sd card adapter that the 2gb micro card fits into and then THAT plugs into the USB port. It's telling me that this device is not supported by iPad! Huh? Really? Why would it not take it? Can anyone help? Thank you in advance.

Jerome Ruddy said, on August 7, 2012 1:18 PM:

I have a second generation ipad. I bought the connection kit. When I have the device plugged into the ipad including the SD card. The photo app does not launch, I do not have a new tab called "camera". The screen does not indicate anything is happening.
I never have a tab called "import". It just does nothing. Any "settings" that could cause this? Do I have to install a different photo app, or is the one
that comes with the ipad the one that is supposed to launch? Any thoughts?

Tony said, on February 10, 2013 6:42 AM:

I have got a Samsung Galaxy Camera EK-GC100 I bought a Sandisk class10 micro card and adaptor to
transfer photos to my Ipad2, all that appears on the Ipad screen is no photos to import.
My HP Photosmart printer shows every photo I take, any advice would be very welcome.

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

How do I import SD Card photos on my Apple iPad?

Reader Comments To Date: 7

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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