I don’t know about you but I take a LOT of pictures with my iPhone. They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and that is definitely the case for me. One thing I loved about the iPhone is the ability to take high quality photos coupled with the ease of editing right on the device with the plethora of photography apps found on the App Store.
Before, all your photos were basically tossed together into one huge photo album on your device unless you went through the pains of organizing them on your computer first. But if you’re like me, you never did. But this has changed!
Now you can create and manage photo albums all on your iPhone. I’ll show you how!
(UPDATE: This is with an older version of iOS. If you have iOS 7 or later, the concepts in this post are still relevant despite the screenshots not matching your device.)
First things first, go to your Photos app on your iPhone.
Now click the edit button at the top-right corner of your screen. You’ll then see something like this:
Go ahead and click add located at the top-left corner and it will prompt this next screen.
Now, name your new photo album and hit save. Next you will choose what photos to add to this new album. Simply touch the photos you want to to add like I did here:
After selecting all your photos you want to add to the new album, go ahead and hit done and just like that you’re done! You’ll now see your new album in your photos app like me:
But that’s not all you can do. You can also mange the photos in your albums after creating the album; you can add more or remove photos from the album. Let’s try doing it together. Go back to your main photo album inside the Photo app called your Camera Roll.
Locate the button of the box with an arrow coming out of it, located at the top-right of your screen. Tap it. Now select the photos you wish to work with (and ultimately add to a specific album). Here’s what my screen looks like at this point:
After being satisfied with your selections, you will notice we have 4 options below to choose from. Right now we will click Add To so we can add these photos to our new album.
Here we can either make another new photo album or simply add the selected photos to an existing album. So right now we will choose Add to Existing Album. After selecting this option we will be prompted to choose what album to add these photos to.
Next select the destination album for these new photos. For me, it’s My Cat, because my cat is awesome (not biased). Then you’re done! You just added photos to an existing photo album.
But what if we want to delete some photos from an album? Well, let’s try and do just that. First, go into a photo album.
Like before, we will click the button with the box and arrow coming out of it in the top-right corner. Then start selecting the photos you wish to remove from that particular photo album. This will not delete the photos. It will only remove the photo from the album. Hence the word Remove.
Now let’s hit Remove and the following screen will be prompted:
This reaffirms you that this action will only remove the photos from this album and the photos will remain in your phone in the main photo album. Hitting Remove from Album completes the job. Nicely done!
Now go through your congested Camera Roll photo album and start organizing all those photos you’ve taken these past few months. I know I did.
Made a mistake of placing an album title on my iOS photos when posting them on Facebook. Now all iOS photos have that album title. How do I delete it?
Are you referring to the title on your iPhone somewhere or on Facebook?
Tom you seem very knowledgeable on this. I tried to use your instructions above for removing picts from albums other than the camera roll on my 4S. but when I hit the edit button I get the share, copy and add to choices but not the remove option. And when I try syncing photos from my phone to my computer it wont show anything to sync except the camera roll. I want the albums on my computer so I can delete and save back to my phone. My only choice now is to email 4 photos at a time and then save them to my computer. any suggestions? thank you
Hi Ed,
To my understanding, you are trying to remove photos from a created-album on your iPhone. Correct?
If so, could you email me (tom@simpleiphone.com) a screenshot of what you see when you hit ‘edit’ in a photo album? Also, what version of iOS do you have on your iPhone?
I love all the great ‘simple’ info here – I have an iphone 5 and i just went to Photos – Albums and the only thing listed is Camera Roll – I haven’t made up any albums yet – my husband has an iphone 5 too but under Albums he has Camera Roll, Photo Library plus pictures synced from his Windows PC to the phone – I feel like I’m missing something
Hey Diane,
For you, under “Albums”, it won’t contain any created albums until you create one. So that sounds right. For your husband, this sounds right as well (until he also creates an album).
What you’re both missing is Photo Stream. You haven’t enabled this yet on your devices. You can learn how to enable this from our tutorial on Photo Streams: http://simpleiphone.net/2012/12/03/how-to-use-photo-stream/
Thanks for reading!
BUT if you download images to the iPhone as an example to collect wallpapers,
and then try to move them to another album you can’t, a copy always has to stay in the Camera Roll. If you try to delete the wallpaper from the Camera Roll it will also delete it from the Album you placed it in, really stupid Apple! 😦
And I’m talking about doing all this through the iPhone only, no iTune…
Does anyone know how many photo albums you can have on the iphone5?
I don’t think there’s a limit other than the actual storage capacity on your device (either 8GB, 16GB or 32GB).
hi! looks like we all have similar frustrations …
we want a camera roll that shows us the “unprocessed” photos (ie. not included in an album) so we can nuke at will.
we also seems to want iPhoto to ask us if we want to import albums we’ve created on our phone.
I can’t wait for the day I can organize 100% on my iOS devices – we are making progress – just slowly 🙂
Can you help with a question on this topic
My wife and I have the same model phono 4s and I can move photos from albums to albums and she does not have this option.
Please advise what could be the reason
Hey Tracey,
First thing you can do is confirm that both of your iPhones are updated to the latest iOS. Please refer to our post about how to easily update your iPhone here: http://simpleiphone.net/2012/03/09/how-to-update-your-iphone/
Let me know if the problem persists.
Thanks for reading.
Thanks for reply Checked for update and both phones are same 6.0.1 For unknown reason wife phone on photo, I can not move a photo from photo stream to a existing album. My phone can do this?????
Tracey
Sent from my iPhone
You must save the photo to your “camera roll” first. Do this by selecting the “share button” located on the bottom-left of your screen while viewing a photo. Then you can assign it to an album.
Hi Tom,
Thanks for your detailed instruction.
now I know how to copy the photos to a new folder but can I delete the photo in the camera roll folders? it seems that if I delete from the CR folder, the photo in other folder will be deleted at the same time.
Thanks for your help
Hey Manling,
Your iPhone uses the Camera Roll as the hard location for your photos. The albums you create simply allow you to replicate them in different groups.
Now, if you want to go the extra mile, photo albums on your iPhone that stem from syncing with iTunes on your computer are not attached to your Camera Roll photos.
Example: I made an album of my wedding pictures on my computer. I select in iTunes to sync photos (selected albums) from my computer to my iPhone. Now I have an album on my iPhone of my wedding pictures that are not on my iPhone’s Camera Roll.
Hope that helps! And thanks for reading.
Thanks for your prompt response. I’ll try to manage it on my computer.
But do you think it’s quite inconvenience?
On my current phone a blackberry which I am replacing soon, and have to decide between buying either an iPhone or a droid. I have a photo album named “shopping list”. I take a photo of something that I need when at the store or hardware store, and move it to that album. I also have the ability to rename a photo and type in info like manufacture, dimensions, model #, etc as the name of the photo, using the name of the photo as notes. On an iPhone can I add notes to or rename an individual photo to store info about it?
Pat,
There is not a way to make notes on photos in your regular “camera roll” (this is where your photos initially go after snapping a picture). However, you can make comments on photos that are in a “shared photo stream” and this is explained in one of our posts here: http://simpleiphone.net/2013/01/09/how-to-use-shared-photo-streams/
Also, consider you are coming from a Blackberry to the iPhone; the smartphone with by far the most robust library of apps. I just did a quick search in the App Store and there are hundreds of grocery shopping apps that you could find very useful while shopping. 🙂
Thanks for reading, Pat!
Tom
Hey Tom
Do you know how to change a cover album photo? Specifically if you are synching from other folders on your PC. Doesn’t appear to go by modified date anymore, so you are stuck with whatever random picture iTunes decides to use. Driving me crazy trying to figure out how to change this. Thanks for your time.
Hi Barry,
Great question. You are able to choose the cover photo of your albums on your iPhone. It simply takes the first photo it finds within the album. Go into the album, hit Edit at the top-right, and touch and drag the photo you wish to be on the cover, and drop it in the first position. Then hit Done. Now that photo should appear as the cover photo on your album thumbnail preview.
Now, I’m not quite sure how this will interact with syncing with your PC. If you are only worried about the album cover photo on your iPhone (not on your computer) then my guess is that this will survive a sync.
Thanks for visiting!
THERE IS NO “REMOVE” OPTION TO REMOVE A PHOTO FROM AN ALBUM
Hey Dave!
Have you tried opening the album > selecting ‘edit’ > ‘remove’?
There is no remove button. I’m having same problem. These are albums that were originally created on the computer not the iPhone. I have over 4000 pics on my iPhone now because all my pics from my computer downloaded to it. I don’t know how to remove them from my phone.
Jenn, if that is the case, try creating a new blank album on your iPhone. Then, move the photos from the album you are having trouble with into this new blank album. I understand it may take a minute to select all of the photos but this may be your only solution.
So go into your album, select Edit, select all the photos you wish to move, select Add To, then select either the blank album you already created or a new one. This should allow you to now manage the photos once their in an album you created on your iPhone.
Eventually, delete the troublesome album. You may have to sync after de-selecting the album within iTunes so it gets removed while syncing.
Hope this helps!
Good explanations…but one more step to go: How do you preserve these iPhone created Albums when you sync to your computer. I have 2,000 pics in my Camera Roll and 8 Albums that I created on the iPhone. Whenever I take a pic that I want in a particular Album, no prob, I do the steps and Add it to the particular album.
Now I want to purge my iPhone of most of the Camera Roll, but preserve, save and keep, the pics in the 8 albums. If I Delete a pic from the Camera Roll it is also removed from the Album. When I sync back to my Mac it syncs the entire Camera Roll but in no way shows the Albums that were created. The only solution I see is to individually go through the 2,000 image Camera Roll and delete pics that are NOT members of an album. If there were a way to sync to the computer and have the same Camera Roll>Album 1, Album 2, Album 3, etc. preserved on import then I could sync those albums back to folders. Any ideas???
Hey Dan,
Have you tried connecting your iPhone to iPhoto on your Mac? Then try to import the albums individually. Save them as an album in iPhoto. Then in iTunes, elect to always have those albums sync with your iPhone. Hope that helps!
I have the same question as Dan. In iPhoto-I only see the albums I created within iPhoto, but it doesn’t look like there is an option to import albums I created on my iPhone. I would really like to import albums from my phone since I already filtered through my 2000 camera roll photos to create albums of photos to highlight. Am I missing a step?
I have a better way:
1- connect your idevice to your pc
2- on your pc go to computer open the idevice and navigate to the folder where your cam roll keeps the photos
3- navigate to itunes (%Userprofile%\Pictures)
4- create a folder call it iCloud (any name you like)
5- inside this folder create as many folders as you need to have albums
6- move pictures from the camera roll folder (in point 2) to the newly created albums folders
7- open itunes click on you device in the left panel, goto Photos tag
8- check Sync Photos from and browse to select the iCloud folder (in point 4)
9- select All folders and include videos
10- hit the Sync button and confirm to erase all from you idevice to have the pictures replaced by the above explained structure
This method allows you to delete the camera roll content keeping your pics in seperate folders but everytime you need to remove a pic or album folder you will have to do so on your pc and then sync.
I hope this helps.
THANKS!!! Your instructions were just what I needed
Thank you! Managing Photos/Albums have been a source of frustration. Your instructions were easy to follow.