How To: Import Photos & Videos from iPad to Mac without iPhoto

I recognize that this isn’t a terribly scintillating topic for many advanced iOS users, but I’m helping to support a school full of teachers with brand new iPads this year. I’ve found it a bit trying to facilitate teacher-management of the devices, oversee the Volume Purchase Program for Apps, and attend to the other duties I’m responsible for throughout the rest of the district. This is the busiest start to the school year yet in my role as an instructional technology coordinator, so in an attempt to stay ahead of at least a few things, I’m making new “how to” videos for the iPads each Monday in hopes that I can answer questions before they arise, and have a ready made stock of video answers for when teachers do come asking.

One question that I’m anticipating is importing videos and pictures from the camera roll of the iPads to teacher’s laptops. I’ll be encouraging teachers to use the iPads for as many student-created media projects as possible, and foresee that the camera rolls on the shared devices (each classroom only has 5 iPads) will fill up fast. While teachers can use a host of options to import media from the iPads (Photostream, e-mail, sync with iPhoto), I’ve loved using Image Capture on our school Macs to quickly pull images and videos from iOS devices to multiple Mac laptops throughout the district.

You can view the video below, or click through to watch via Youtube. For those that have Macs, Image Capture is a great little application that can be used with any digital camera, and works very well for iOS devices that you want to import media from, but don’t want to have to worry about syncing or cluttering up your iPhoto library with images and videos you just need to get on your machine to then upload or share to other places.