6 apps to help with photo organization
CAMERA+ $2.99 Made for iPhone, Watch
One of the most popular alternatives to your iPhone’s built-in camera app, Camera+ has a relatively rare, powerful feature called a “lightbox.” It’s a place to save the photos you take with Camera+ in the app, rather than with all your other pictures stored in Photos. Don’t worry, though, Camera+ can also sync your lightbox photos to iCloud, so they’re kept safe.
The lightbox is a great way to keep your photography experiments separate from your day-to-day photos.
SCREENSHOT JOURNAL $2.99 Made for iPhone, iPad
If you take screenshots on your devices, they can quickly clutter your library of regular photos. Screenshot Journal is a great solution to this problem, as it can automatically yank out all screenshots from your library in Photos.
It has filters based on device type, a tagging system, one-tap import of all screenshots in Photos, and an option to delete them all from that app, too.
That last capability is obviously tremendously useful, but also potentially disastrous — use it with caution.
ADOBE CREATIVE CLOUD Free Made for iPhone, iPad
As you do more of your work on iPad or iPhone, you might need a separate place to organize the photos you take for professional use. A great option for this is Adobe Creative Cloud.
It’s essentially Adobe’s cloud file manager for its family of design apps, and there are deep ties for those built in. But you can import media from other apps too, and automatically delete all screenshots from Photos once they’ve been imported.
GIFWRAPPED Free Made for iPhone, iPad
GIFs have become an unlikely new communication currency of our modern, mobile times. GIFwrapped is an excellent GIF finding, saving, and sharing app.
It has an app extension for grabbing GIFs from other apps, and can scan for GIFS in the Photos app and import them. Dropbox sync keeps your carefully curated library safe and, unlike Photos, GIFwrapped can actually play GIFs in all their animated glory.
GOOGLE PHOTOS Free Made for iPhone, iPad
If you have no objections to anything in Google’s terms and conditions, Google Photos is a good alternative to Apple Photos. It offers unlimited, free backup for photos up to 16 megapixels, and does automatic organization similar to Photos’ Memories and Siri-powered search.
FLIC Free Made for iPhone
If you find triaging your library with Photos’ built-in tools a bit tedious, Flic offers a fast, unique approach cleverly borrowed from Tinder. Flic displays one photo at a time, and you can swipe left to delete or right to keep. You can also mark photos as favorites, and when you’re done sorting, Flic can move all your rejected photos to the trash.