To get the images onto my iPad, I created a document in Pages, the word processor part of Apple’s iWork suite, on my MacBook with all the graphics pasted in, about 25MB. I then added this file to iTunes so that it would transfer during my next sync. While it’s great that Apple created this universal method for transferring documents, I really wish that the individual programs had a Send to iPad menu option. It’s a useful method but seems like afterthought.

The file took forever to load on Pages for iPad. Once the graphics were visible they appeared to be stacked a top one another and were terribly pixelated. I didn’t have the chance to find out if the resolution would improve because Pages crashed.

Figuring that the problem was too many layered files, I opened Pages on the MacBook again, divided the images into three separate documents with about 1/3 of the graphics in each file, and repeated the iTunes sync.

This time when I loaded the file on the iPad, the images quickly resolved to the resolution I was expecting. Unfortunately, the images were still stacked. Perhaps if I had added some text to help flesh out the layout, the images would not be all floating in the center of the document. Some users have reported that documents that look fine in one version of Pages don’t always look the same in the other.

As it was now less than five hours before I had to get up, I went to bed after shutting down all the home computers and making sure the iPad was charged up.

Headed to the airport in the morning, I realized too late that the best way to transfer the images would’ve been to export them from Little Snapper, the screen capture program I use, into iPhoto in a screenshots Album and then synched that to my iPad. This would allow me to import each graphic as needed via the Media library in Pages.

Fortunately, I had copied all the work-in-progress to my iDisk online from which I could download the material directly to my iPad. Now you’d think that the best choice for this activity would be Apple’s own iDisk app but as this is still an iPhone app, it’s only useful for viewing your files online, not downloading them. Luckily, I had bought GoodReader for it’s excellent PDF reading, along with RTF and various image formats. GoodReader can also grab new items from most servers, including the one at MobileMe. So I accessed my iDisk while at JFK on layover, downloaded the 60 images, and saved each file into the System album for iPhoto where I’d be able to retrieve them later in Pages.

Now I had the images and could see that I had neglected to use Little Snapper’s excellent tools to annotate and in many instances crop the images. On the iMac or MacBook I could do the cropping in iPhoto but the iPad version is designed to show your photos off, not edit them. Still at JFK, I logged into Apple’s App Store, did a quick search for “crop photo” and decided on the highly rated Photogene ($3.99) which has text and shape callouts, frames, filters, levels and more. Exactly what I needed to get the images in shape for the help document.

There was a bit more effort involved without access to my usual programs and workflow and I spent a few bucks I otherwise would not have spent to get some of that functionality. However, buying Photogene was quick and easy compared to having to hit a retail store to purchase software. In flight, I had more passenger room than usual to write on my iPad where even with my 13″ MacBook I’d have been cramped at the keyboard, especially when the seat in front of me tilted back.

As a note of interest, I used a bit over 40% of the battery grabbing all those files from online, shopping at the App Store, running Photogene through it’s paces, and writing this article over the course of four hours. In comparison, I’ve previously watched four hours of video and played two hours of a game on the iPad, using equivalent battery life. My MacBook would’ve last through the first two hour movie before I’d consider putting it to sleep, in case I wanted to actually work sometime during the flight.

This entire article was written on and delivered by Jamie’s iPad, using only the virtual keyboard while in-flight, a “laptop” whose screen was not jammed into an unviewable angle by the seat in front of him.