Tools to get creative with your iPad

Photography

Though iPad 2 can capture only poor quality pictures, you can still use it to view, edit and share photos.

To do so, you will need the Apple iPad Camera Connection Kit, available from Apple for $30. Plug the connector into the USB slot normally used to charge or sync your iPad and either connect your camera’s SD card or any digital camera through the USB hookup. The iPad detects that a camera is connected and allows you to download photos that can be viewed and edited. The download process is zippy and straightforward.  Although iPad-specific photo editing apps are still trickling into the iTunes App Store, a few considerable options are available for download.

Adobe Photoshop Express, which is free, will let you change the contrast, saturation and brightness of an image. You can also apply a number of dramatic filters that will make your photos turn black and white or give them an old sepia tone.

Other applications, including Color Effect and ColorBlast, both free downloads from iTunes, which will let you change the color of images, and even focus on a specific part of a photo to change that area.

Painting and drawing

Artists with iPads can pick through a long list of drawing apps. Some promote the use of a finger, which is reminiscent of the finger painting you did as a child, minus the messy paint-drenched hands, of course. Brushes, $5, lets you finger-paint digitally. It’s somewhat difficult to get used to this medium, but with a little patience, you can create beautiful drawings.

Autodesk sells a suite of intense drawing and design applications. Sketchbook Pro, $5, can be used for more advanced painting and drawing, where users can change brush sizes, colors and create masterly works of art worthy of Leonardo’s sketchbook.

Writing and blogging

When it comes to the onscreen keyboard on the iPad – which takes some getting used to – people either love or despise it. For those in the latter camp, several companies offer external keyboards with real keys that can connect to the iPad through Bluetooth.

Although not designed specifically for the iPad, Apple offers a wireless keyboard for $70. Logitech also sells a beautiful keyboard and protective case in-one for $100.

Writing apps range from basic notes to high-end word processing. Apps like Evernote, which is free, Trunk Notes, $4, and SmartNote, $3, allow you to write long or short notes that can either be saved on the iPad or shared with another computer.

Apple’s Pages, $10, is a word processor as good as any program available for a computer.

Handwritten notes

The iPad was never really meant to be touched with a stylus or pen. But in reality, a pen is sometimes mightier than a touch-screen keyboard.

Dozens of iPad pens are available. Pogo offers several pens priced from $8 to $30. A novel pen called the oStylus, $38, looks eerily like a scalpel used in an operating room, but is designed to offer an accurate penlike experience for the iPad.

But there is a catch to writing on the iPad. Although the multitouch screen is a blessing with some apps, when you try using a pen on the iPad, frustrations can quickly arise. For example, when the palm of your hand touches the screen while trying to write with a stylus, you will see a trail of scraggly lines all over the page left from your wrist brushing against the display.

To tackle this, some note-taking apps try to distinguish between the tip of a pen and the palm of your hand.

Notes Plus, $5, has a little tab at the bottom of the page called a Palm Pad. This can drag up the page to a desired point; if your palm touches the screen below this line, it is completely ignored.

The boring stuff: Work

For those who practice the dark arts of PowerPoint or Excel, Apple’s iWork suite, which includes Keynote and Numbers, allows you to create elegant presentations or in-depth lists of numbers that add up to create even more numbers.