It makes sense that so many people are turning towards their iPhones as their primary cameras these days (and to a lesser extent their iPads and iPad minis). You have your phone with you all the time, and it has a better than decent camera. The built in Photos app on iOS gives you very basic editing options — crop, rotate, fix red-eye and enhance — but it doesn’t allow the fine tune control you may actually want when fixing up those iPhone photos.

The Basics: 

iPhoto works with iPhone 4 or later, iPod Touch 4th Gen or later, iPad 2 or later. It requires iOS 6. It costs $4.99

Why we like it:

We’ve been very impressed with Apple’s iPhoto app. If you own a Mac computer, you’re probably already familiar with the program. It’s an organizer and a basic editor all in one, and it is pretty decent at its job. iPhoto for iOS, though, takes advantage of touch screens to allow you in depth control and to offer some features that are missing from its computer counterpart.

It works in sync with your photos app, pulling all the pictures and albums you have stored there, including photo stream and shared photo streams. There are a lot of options on the edit screen, which can be a little overwhelming at first, but tapping the ? icon has labels for each option popping up — these persistent labels stay even as you change modes so you can explore the os.  After you’ve made edits to a photo, iPhoto automatically creates a new album called edited photos — so your original is preserved. 

You can also create journals, which is a easy tool for pulling together photos of an event with other information you might put in a traditional paper journal. This mode allows you to add captions, maps, weather information, notes, dinner menu, and even dates. Adjusting the layout is as simple as tapping a photo and dragging its borders (or dragging the photo to a new location). You can then share it as a slideshow, send it to iTunes or publish to iCloud.

Warnings