iPad for Digital Photographers

Tips for the Road Warrior

As I described throughout the book, the iPad is suited for the photographer on the go. And you can enhance your experience even more by practicing a few road-warrior tips that I've learned during my travels.

Staying Charged

The iPad battery life is excellent. But heavy use for extended periods of time eventually exhausts your power. Photo work creates additional stress on the battery. Here are a few ways to extend that battery life.

Adjust screen brightness to the task at hand. When editing images, you need to set the brightness between 85 and 90 percent so you can properly judge the exposure of your photos on the screen — even though this high setting uses more power. To adjust the brightness, go to the Settings app's Brightness & Wallpaper pane, shown in Figure 10-1. Turn off Auto-Brightness. (You want to be in control of this setting.) Then move the brightness slider over, as shown in Figure 10-1.

But when you're not editing photos, you can help conserve battery life by dimming the screen to 50 percent or so, depending on your personal preference.

I like to have quick access to my frequently used controls such as Brightness, Wi-Fi, and Airplane Mode, so I keep the Settings app on the Dock, as shown in Figure 10-2. To move the Settings app's icon there, ...