6 Top iOS Photo Apps

When you open your Photos app, do you feel overwhelmed by a veritable mishmash of photos and videos? Depending on how many photos you have -- and on what you want to do with them -- managing the images on your iPhone's Camera Roll can prove to be a royal pain.

If you use Photo Stream across your iOS devices, you probably appreciate how your photos are stored in iCloud -- albeit for 30 days -- and Shared Photo Stream lets you specify which photos you want to share and who you'd like to share them with. But things can get cumbersome if you want to customize your photo arrangement by moving images into albums on your iOS devices and not have them deleted wholesale, for instance.

That's where these apps come in. Read on for the lowdown on essential tools to help you take charge of your photos in a way that suits your style.

First up: a sync-centric app.

Do you routinely upload your photos from your iPhone or iPad to a popular destination such as Dropbox or Facebook? PhotoSync, by Touchbyte, tries to take the tedium out of transfers -- all that clicking, waiting or hunting for a cable -- especially if you have a truckload of photos to move. This $1.99 app simplifies the transfer of photos -- and videos -- wirelessly to Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Google Drive, Google+/Picasa, SmugMug, SkyDrive, FTP/SFTP and more. It also takes care of moving files to and from your computer and your iOS devices. In fact, PhotoSync is tailored to work seamlessly over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth for direct transfer among iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads.

The company says that the app does not limit the number of photos or videos you can shift at a given time. Two other benefits: You can set a default target -- a specific computer or online service -- and all new or selected files will automatically transfer to this location. Plus, if you use iPhoto or Aperture, PhotoSync lets you import into these programs. Note: You must have the company's free PhotoSync Companion for Mac OS X installed to take advantage of all transfers involving your iOS devices and computer. PhotoSync requires iOS 4.3 or later.