Apple launches gestures-heavy iPhoto for iPad, can tell you weather in images. Available today for $4.99

In what many might call a long overdue move, Apple finally ported the photo management application iPhoto to iPad. The release of the software completes a trio of the most important iLife apps that are now available on the iPad: iMovie, GarageBand, and now iPhoto. The app supports images up to 19-megapixels. It also sports many familiar and popular features, including the auto-enhance tool, social sharing through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, email, and more.

The iPhoto app is aimed at people who “want to do more with your photos.” One aspect immediately becomes clear: iPhoto for iPad is gestures-heavy (per an extensive live demo Apple’s Chief Architect for Photo and Video Randy Ubillos gave on stage).

You can use the new bezel gesture —a first for an Apple-made iPad app— to swipe from the left side of the screen to look at other images in the album. From there, just tap on an image to bring the editing interface up. When you want to bring in the thumbnail view, just swipe from the side again.

Another cool feature: Double-tapping a single image tells iPhoto to scan your entire library and compare all the images to find the ones that look similar. You can also beam photos between devices over-the-air, tap a specific area to adjust it, touch, and drag to brighten or tweak saturation, and more.

However, when it comes down to heavy image editing, the iPhoto app does not disappoint. For example, brush palettes include tools such as red-eye, saturation, and lighten. Other notables include sharpen, soften, darken, and a general repair tool. Meanwhile, the effects gallery includes black and white, vignette, tilt-shift, watercolor, and more.

More information is available below.

Journals is —put simply—a page showing all the highlighted pictures. The layout, as we have come to expect from Apple, is very efficient, fun to use, and just gorgeous. Photos with captions or favorites are slotted into larger spots while others are smaller. In case you want to quickly edit photos, just drag them around or change their displayed size. This view also allows you to add notes and texts, and there is a calendar to show when your photos were taken. Geotags are supported as well, and there is even a weather icon that can tell you the weather in the image.

The new iPhoto app costs $4.99 a pop and will be available later today from the App Store. Apple also updated the iMovie for iOS app with slight refinements, including storyboards and new editing chops.

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