What I want to do; import photos from my camera to the iPad 2, weed some out, edit a few more, and later upload (sync?) the remaining edited photos to my PC.

I tried following the instructions in "iPad For Dummies" by Baig and Levitus. But they are brief and seem incomplete. Iimporting .jpg photos from my SD card via Apple's Camera Connection Kit worked perfectly. And editing photos with Photos and Photoshop Express was a breeze; but I can't get them into my PC.

I created a new directory on the PC to receive them, selected this directory in iTunes under the Photo tab while the iPad was connected, and clicked Apply. On the first attempt, iTunes crashed. The second attempt resulted in a new directory and two mystery files created in the PC directory. The new directory is named "iPod Photo Cache". The files are "Photo Database" (no suffix) 2 KB, and "PhotoDatabaseReserve.tmp" 1 MB. I tried opening "Photo Database" with iTunes, but iTunes just came up with no photos in it (where would they go anyway?).

I also noticed that the edited pictures I saved in Photoshop Express were in album Camera Roll intead of All Imports, where they came from. At least the pictures are still in the iPad somewhere, and on the camera's SD card. Advice please!

I'm afraid the iTunes sync method is one way. It creates read-only albums in the Photos app. It won't copy photos on the Camera Roll, Saved Pictures, or Imported Albums back to the computer. These rolls/albums are where all pictures created or imported on the iPad end up, and other than including them in the backup, iTunes does nothing with them. (the backup is not a simple file copy, so you can't get them that way either)

There are other ways. If you are using Windows, the iPad should show up just like any other USB drive, and you'll find your Camera Roll pictures in the DCIM folder. I'm not sure where/if the other two show up. I'm not a Windows user.

You can also use an app like PhotoSync to copy back and forth from the computer. There are others apps (many) that do this in various ways.

How right you are, Twerppoet. Windows XP kept bringing up a floating interface program menu when I connected the iPad 2, calling it a "camera." I'd been muttering uncharitable things about Windows' obtuseness and closing it to resume working with iTunes, which I thought was the only software that could talk to the iPad 2. (Who's obtuse here?)

So I tried again and went with the Windows Scanner-Camera Wizard, since it boasted it can load pictures from a camera (I see now that lots of software can do this -- just not iTunes). It grabbed all the pics from all the albums on the iPad 2, both pre- and post-edit versions. Apparently Camera Roll, which held my after-edit copies, came last, since the edited pics came out last with the highest file numbers. I compared picture sizes with other picture files and see that they weren't resized (good).

Thanks for making Apple's one-way architecture clear to me. It's good to know I can use the iPad 2 like a computer after all, even tho I have to work around Apple's monopolistic business model.

I love my iPad2 but I do NOT love its image-handling abilities.

For me as a photographer the iPad is going to remain an engaging toy until Apple gets serious about file management and image handling. I knew when I bought it that there would be problems in this department, so I have no grounds for whines or complaint— except that I hope Apple cures this limitation at some point.

Between PhotoSynch and Keynote I can make it work. But I long for an easier way. Workarounds get old really fast.

Plainsman, I don't know a lot about photography but I think there's some value even tho it's not ideal. It does handle .raw files, and it didn't compress or resample the .jpg files I uploaded.

OTOH the little fixed-lens cameras are toys regardless of their megapixel counts. And the picture editors I've found so far are toys. Even Photoshop Express wastes several of its scant choices on useless psychedelic effects when they could have given us the Healing Brush or Magnetic Lasoo. But if you bear in mind Apple's business plan, which requires a mass market composed mostly of non-photographers to make a gadget like this feasible, the toy aspect makes sense, though it dismays us. Maybe someday we'll see a "professional" iPad, like the specialty calculators for engineers, accountants, etc. that started coming out in the 1970s.

Keeping iTunes limited to a one-way interface, while leaving workarounds to go the other way the subject of folklore, is a finger in the eye to everybody .