I have written before about the frustration of managing and processing photos in the Camera Roll of the iPhone. It's difficult to manage and copy photos to albums, and to select multiple images you must tap on them one at a time. Photos you move or copy to another folder automatically also get deleted when you remove them from the Camera Roll.

With the Fall release of iOS 7, a new Photos app will do a better job of managing photos in collections by date and location. This sounds very good, but if you would like to get these features on your iPhone now, you can with Photoful [No Longer Available].

Instant Camera Roll Organization

Photoful includes photo processing and editing features similar to other third-party iPhone camera apps, but its mark of distinction is how it helps you organize your photos. Photoful connects and links to images in your iPhone Camera Roll, and then instantly organizes images by year, month, and day.

It looks similar to the new Photos app for iOS 7, but there may well be some features in Photoful that Apple didn't add. Photoful takes full advantage of the iPhone finger gestures that are so powerful in advanced mail client apps like Mailbox and Cloze.

With the Photoful photo management software, you can pinch, swipe and tap to browse, tag, and open single photos and photo collections. If you're a long time user of the iPhone camera, you'll be pleased to see how Photoful organizes your images taken or added to your iPhone as far back as when date tags were added to them. My collection goes back as far as 2000 and I was happy to discover that Photoful ignores screenshots taken on your iPhone.

You can tap on a year to reveal photos broken down by months, and then tap on a month to reveal all the photos taken each day of that month. When you want to select multiple photos, you don't have to tap them one at a time, you can simply slide your finger across the images.

After making your selections, you can either tap one of the "Move here" tabs to move the selected photos to another month, day, or album. You can also create and assign tags to selected images.

Note: Just as with the default Photos app on the iPhone, when you delete a photo from your Camera Roll, it also deletes it from Photoful, even if you have moved those photos into a separate album. See my article on alternative ways to manage photos on your iPhone if you want a way to retain images indefinitely.

Also, due to AppStore rules, third-party apps can't delete photos. So the photos you delete remain in Photoful's trash folder. The developers say that they are working on a companion Mac and PC app to overcome this limitation.

Editing and Enhancing Photos

The developers of Photoful didn't just stop at the unique photo management features. The app also includes over a dozen photo editing and enhancement tools for cropping, correcting exposure, adding contrast and sharpness, removing red eye, changing orientation, applying filters, and much more.

Photoful contains over a dozen fancy Instagram-like photo filters, with names like Clyde, Avenue, Keylime, Boardwalk, and the black & white filter, Metropolis.

Photoful also includes features for adding a picture frame to photos, as well as text, stickers, and line drawings. There's even a feature for creating photo memes (see above screenshot.) The developers have left very little out of this photo app, and I'm pretty sure they have a few more features up their sleeve.

Sharing Photos

Photoful allows you to share photos to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Mail, and Messages. The developers also include a link so you can request other apps for photos to be shared to.

There's also a Create feature for sending a photo as a postcard, and other similar and forthcoming features  for making photo collages, photo slideshows, and for ordering prints of selected photos.

Get It

If you already have lots of photos on your iPhone, there's little reason not to download Photoful photo management software (for free) and give it a try. The developers have put a lot of thought and planning into the app. It fills the gaps missing in Apple's existing Photos app, and it should provide a better management solution until iOS 7 lands at least.

Let us know what you think of Photoful in the comments below this post.