iPhoto

Update (4/12/14).-- I sit corrected as there is an easy to use, choose your download folder application for iPad and iPhones. That's Image Capture, an Apple app which connects to the devices when they're connected to the Mac. So the other methods aren't necessary if you have this application.

Original Post.--I've never been a fan, let alone a user of Apple's iPhoto, and even though I still use it to download images from my iPad or iPhone (except you can now specify to open Aperature but that's overkill to open an app to just download image files), I still hate it.

The part I hate the most is that the app doesn't let you set the folder to store your images, iPhotos just takes them into a subfolders you can't move them, but you can either export them in iPhoto or copy them in Finder.

The export option is often the preferred if you don't want to make a mistake with iPhoto, again the stupid app's management logic of your imates, is simply select the image in iPhoto and then export a copy from iPhoto to the folder you want.

If you want to use Finder then you have to go to the applications folder and to the iPhoto application. use the right click on the app to show the options. Click "View Package Contents". Go to the Masters folder where you'll see the subset of folder by year, month, date and download date-time.

You can go into those folder to see the image files. DO NOT MOVE THEM, but simply use the option key to either make a copy or move a copy to the folder you want. This leaves the original there and gives you an exact copy of the orginal image.

You can find a host of other ways to do this, but I find these the quickest and easiest. What's funny is the people on the Apple forum who argue two points. One, it's ok for Apple to control the original images from your iPhone or iPad instead of giving you a choice of folders.

The second are the people who defend Apple's stupid logic with this decision to hide your image files only allowing you access through application, preferably theirs with iPhoto or Aperature. I used to almost always agree with Apple, but over the recent years I've disagreed more than I've agreed with them, but that's another issue.