Importing photos with labels from PC into iPad

[maddaze]

Have a brand-new iPad Mini, bought for the purpose of showing my photos of heritage sites around Bordeaux. I have thousands of such photos organized into hundreds of folders, subfolders, and sub-subfolders on my PC and would like to import them into the iPad, preserving the folder/subfolder/sub-subfolder structure I have now. I would also like to pass along the titles of the photos. As an accomplished programmer, I can manipulate them as required to facilitate the import. As you can imagine, I don't want to have to manually recreate anything on the iPad. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this?

Harvey in chilly Bordeaux (0°C)

 

[giradman]

Hi Harvey - welcome to the forum! First, I'm afraid that you will be quite frustrated in getting your photos onto the iPad in the hierarchical structure that exists on the PC; and second, further disappointed in the transference of your titles - sorry. The native photo app (or the iPhoto app) is rather limited and will not bring in your pics as you may desire. Now, I have over a dozen photo apps (some for editing, others for organization, or both) - the reason is that there just is not an ideal solution to photo manipulation/sorting in iOS, which is an 'app centric' operating system.

You may want to look at this previous THREAD which elaborates on these limitations - 3rd party apps may help, such as Photo-Sort (which is on my iPad) and also discussed in the link. Also, you might want to google 'iTunes syncing subfolders' for plenty of hits and commentary on the frustrations of this process, such as THIS ONE. Hopefully others will 'chime in' w/ more recent advice or 'photo app' discoveries. But good luck and please report your progress. Dave

 

[maddaze]

Thanks, Dave, for laying it out. And drat!

I'll investigate further, but fear I may have to scale back what I'd had in mind. Instead of downloading thousands of photos in hundreds of buckets in an elaborate structure, I suppose I'll have to think of terms of carrying a sampling of photos, photos that I'll have to sort out manually once on the the iPad. If I come to a different conclusion, I'll report back.

I see my unspoken assumption about a device from the company that makes the preferred tools of media professionals just bit me in a sensitive spot.

Harvey

 

[giradman]

Hi again Harvey - not to be the bearer of more bad news, but iTunes & photo syncing can also be tricky & a pain (where you alluded to above - ) - click on my attached image (just cabled my iPad, opened iTunes, and then the photo tab - right end); I have the settings to 'Sync Photos' but only selected folders which are checked - if I performed a sync now and the folders on my laptop were identical to those on the iPad, then nothing would happen; however, if I added or deleted images w/i those folders, then the changes would be reflected on the iPad; NOW, if I unchecked those folders, all of their images would be removed from the iPad; and further images added to the iPad in this fashion cannot be removed on the device, i.e. a sync must be done. YES, I know having lived w/ this iPad 2 for nearly 3 years (will be getting an Air soon but the app is the same!).

You might want to visit the iBooks store (iBooks should be on your iPad Mini) and/or Amazon and pick up one or several guides to iTunes 11; also, check out my post in this THREAD - I just purchased an AirStash which is an alternate way to get your images onto the iPad - there are others, of course. Good luck! Dave

 

[maddaze]

Dave,

I'm afraid to ask what the transfer rate is for the WiFi drives.

Still working on understanding/mastering the choices for setting up complex folder structures. Suspect I'll just have to jump in and learn the hard way. As my father used to say, "Experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn in no other."

Harvey

 

[AQ_OC]

I have a potential way to do this....I've used Goodreader for import zipped up folders from my PC to my iPad...the folder structure is maintained inside GoodReader and one can drill up and down. I did this for a conference CD that was full of PDF files where the master PDF linked to pdfs in subfolders organized by session. What I don't know is using Goodreader for jpegs and I don't know about the labels you put on the images. For $10, you can get the app and experiement and then teach us something.

 

[AQ_OC]

I just imported a folder of jpgs from my Skydrive account. GR can read them and lets you scroll from image to image with a finger....so, it is not impossible.

I'm wondering if you could so something similiar in iPhoto (or some other app). The thing you have to remember is that without jailbreaking an iPad, it won't show you folders or files...Apps own files...so the app will have to have the ability to track files stored in a folder structure.

It is not clear to me how your labeling works for your images. I don't title my images so I don't have any handy example file to test.

 

[giradman]

Dave,

I'm afraid to ask what the transfer rate is for the WiFi drives.

Still working on understanding/mastering the choices for setting up complex folder structures. Suspect I'll just have to jump in and learn the hard way. As my father used to say, "Experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn in no other."

Hi Harvey - you might want to check AQ_OC's Review of the product in the linked sticky - as I recall transfer rates of files are mentioned, and likely may leave a comment in view of the posts left already.

The AirStash device sets up its own Wi-Fi network using up to the 802.11n protocol - see the attached image (click to enlarge) comparing these various Wi-Fi protocols including their 'theoretical' speeds stating rates up to 300 (and even 450) Mbps but that is w/ the use of multiple channels and/or antennas - 150 Mbps is probably a good maximum (assuming the AirStash & the iPad Mini are both using the n protocol) - NOW, 8 bits into that 'top' rate is about 20 MB/sec which would not be bad for images in the KB range - at the moment this is guess work and I'd have to test w/ my own pics. Dave

 

[cecilrwilliams]

If under one main folder. What happens when you move the folder from PC to iPad image folder? I have a WIFI portable that does a great job with my photos.

 

[maddaze]

AQ_OC,

I already have GoodReader on my iPad. Use it my iPhone and love it for reading and annotating documents or books. Interesting idea about using it to organize folders of photos. However, I'll save that for a last resort after I've given up on photo apps.

Harveu

 

[AQ_OC]

Harveu,
I agree. Try to find a way to do it with a real photo app first...it will work best that way. I just mentioned GR because I know it can deal with folders that come right off the PC, which seemed like a big part of what you were trying to get.

 

[maddaze]

> It is not clear to me how your labeling works for your images.

I hadn't specified how I use labelling. When the photos in a folder are all associated with one building, I use the label to give the date of the photo and name of the photographer. However, when it's a collection of photos across a geographic area, I also include the names of the town and the building. The photos are stored in Photoshop Elements and I use the Organizer to sort them into towns and buildings. Then I use PHP to extract the label data from the SQLite database used by Photoshop Elements. For example, that's how I manage the photos (and their labels) for the wiki I'm developing.

Harvey

 

[maddaze]

For the time being, I'm using DropBox to pass photos to my iPad. I have Photo Manager Pro and prefer its way of displaying photos. However, DropBox is good enough for the time being and I will devote more time to mastering PhotoMgrPro at some future moment.

Harvey

 

[twerppoet]

Thank you for coming back and letting us know what you ended up using.

 

[maddaze]

Thank you for coming back and letting us know what you ended up using.

You're quite welcome.

Harvey