Macbook Air iPhoto does not see albums on the iPad

I have a number of photo albums on my iPad. When I connect my iPad to my macbook air and go to iPhoto I only see the photos in my camera roll.

1. I want to transfer my photos on my iPad to my mac. I can't sync my photos because it was synced with another device previously and I don't want my photos on my iPad to be deleted. I need to get the photos onto my mac first before I sync.

2. When I had a PC I could simply go to the iPad and select the photos and copy and paste them. I cannot find any place on the mac where I can browse the photos on the iPad?

Am I missing something?

Please help. I am starting to thing I made a huge mistake getting the macbook air.

You could use a 3rd-party app such as the free WiFi Photo Transfer to access all those pictures on your MacBook Air. It uses a web browser to access the photos, so you don't have to install any software on the MacBook Air or deal with syncing.

The whole process is easy:

1. Launch the app on the iPhone or iPad
2. On your computer, you type in the address it tells you to in a browser.
3. You can then choose to either download a specific picture or entire albums.

Another benefit is that none of the pictures are sent to the Internet.

Use iPhoto for iOS

You could download iPhoto for iOS, this will sync all your iPad's photos to iPhoto on your Mac.

Use iCloud

This can also be done by enabling iCloud's Photo stream on both your iPad Settings>iCloud>photo stream - turn that on. (Obviously only if you have an iCloud account)

Then on your MacBook go to System Prefrences>iCloud>photo stream.

These settings will enable photo syncing between your devices over the cloud.