Q: Best way to transfer photos on an iPad 2

You sync them in iTunes, same as music and apps. Home videos will need to be converted to iPad format.

You can buy camera conection kit in Apple store.

Camera Connection Kit   http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4101

Ipad User Guide

Another way.

You can use a USB flash drive & the camera connection kit.

Plug the USB flash drive into your computer & create a new folder titled DCIM. Then put your movie/photo files into the folder. The files must have a filename with exactly 8 characters long (no spaces) plus the file extension (i.e., my-movie.mov).

Now plug the flash drive into the iPad using the camera connection kit. Open the Photos app, the movie/photo files should appear & you can import.

 Cheers, Tom

You can do basic editing of photos in the Photos app, but there are also third-party apps that you can copy the photos into for editing e.g. the free Adobe Photoshop Express (you will get an edited version of the photos in the Camera Roll album in the Photos app). You can use photos from the Photos app as your wallpaper, and you can email them from there as well (you can select up to 5 to attach to one email).