12 apps to fill your iPhone's photography folder

— -- Each week Reviewed.com explores a new mobile photo app. Here are a dozen of the best iPhone photo apps we've looked at over the past six months. This set of apps can handle just about anything one would want to do with mobile snapshots, and cost less than $10. Start stocking up.

Taking Photos

All photo apps shoot with the same level of photo quality, since they all use the same camera that's built into the iPhone. So why not just stick with the default Camera App? Well, some apps come with better tools and features for composing and capturing the best shots, or better ways to share. I keep these apps at the top of my photography folder, and they cover just about every shooting situation I've run into.

— Camera+. This is one of the most popular photo programs in the entire app store. I found that it offers the best shooting experience, the most helpful shooting options, and a good set of in-app edits and sharing options. It's my camera app of choice, and I usually keep it on my front screen for easy access. One of the best single dollars I've ever spent, except maybe for a winning scratch ticket. ( $0.99)

— Instagram. Say what you will about the faux-film filters and effects, Instagram is one of the coolest, most engaging social networks out there right now, and it's not just for hipsters. Shooting and filtering photos is dead-simple, and the network lets you follow friends and family alike. Facebook famously plunked down $1 billion for this small company because for the first time in years, big blue felt threatened by another photo-sharing service. ( Free)

— Camera Timer! This is the most versatile timer app we've found for iOS. Camera+ has a few short timer settings, but this app can stretch out the delay to 60 seconds, and has a multi-shot (interval) feature, too. I mostly use it for group self-portraits, but it might be handy for creating animated gifs. ( Free)

— SocialCam. Camera+ and the default camera app are both fine for shooting video clips. But like Instagram, it's SocialCam's network that really makes it a worthwhile download. Even if you aren't familiar with the app itself, you've already seen friends share SocialCam videos on their Facebook feeds. ( Free)

— 360 Panorama. The name says it all. Functionally, it's almost impossible to capture a clean panorama—it stitches dozens of photos into a massive composite image, so there's always some weird ghosting and overlap. But it's good enough to get the idea across. If you want to give a remote tour of your brand-new apartment or dorm room, take note. ( $0.99)

Viewing Photos

Viewing photos on the iPhone's 3.5-inch screen is a matter of convenience, a lot like reviewing shots on a digital camera's LCD screen. So I keep a couple of apps around to make the navigation and organization a little bit cleaner.

— Photos. Apple's default photo viewer is slightly, uh…bare bones is probably the nice way to put it. But it's a direct link to your camera roll, the hub for all images on your iPhone or iPad. Saved an image in Camera+ and want to import it into Instagram? It's going through the camera roll. Can't find an image? Check the camera roll. There should be a better system, but this is the best fail-safe we've got right now. You can't delete the app anyway, so you might as well try to embrace it.

— Woven. This one aggregates photos from most of your photo-sharing accounts, divvied up by album and labeled by date and source. If your photos are scattered around the Internet on disparate services like Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram, Woven is a great way to pull them all together. It hadn't crossed my mind that this app would be so convenient until we actually reviewed it. ( Free)

Editing Photos

Even small touchscreens are great for quick photo edits. This is probably the biggest sub-category of photography-related apps, but I've managed to narrow my favorites down to a proper handful, mainly to fill the gaps where my top image-capture apps fall short.

— Snapseed. This award-winning editing software pairs high-level edits with an incredibly intuitive interface. It's particularly excellent on the iPad, where the bigger screen allows for a greater level of control. This spring, I used Snapseed on the iPad to touch up an entire vacation's worth of photos before I even got home. The standard asking price is about $5—totally worth it—but it goes on sale every now and then. Keep an eye out for discounts. ( $4.99)

— ColorStrokes. When we reviewed this app a scant two months ago, it was called Color Splash Studio, ported from a popular Mac desktop app. The app's developer, MacPhun, changed the name ostensibly because there was already a popular app called Color Splash. It's all too confusing for a $0.99 app, but whatever it's called these days, it's a fun and surprisingly efficient way to create selective-color photos. It isn't suitable for every occasion, but I like it enough to keep it in my bag of tricks. ( $0.99)

— Diptic. Diptic creates editable photo frames made up of two, three, or more photos in one. Sounds kind of lame, but it's actually a great app—creativity thrives when rules are applied. This is another app that's way better on the iPad, thanks again to the huge screen. Still worth a dollar on the iPhone, too. ( $0.99)

— GifBoom. The Internet still loves animated gifs, and GifBoom makes it easy to create and share them from your phone. Like Instagram, there's a vibrant, creative social network attached to it as well, with some very creative stuff going on. ( Free)

— Cinemagram. And if animated gifs aren't cool enough, Cinemagram creates cinemagraphs, where just one part of the image moves, while the rest remains stationary. It takes a few hours to learn how to use this thing, but it's all time well spent. ( Free)

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For more photography news and in-depth camera reviews, head to head to DigitalCameraInfo.com, a part of the Reviewed.com network. Reviewed.com is a division of USA TODAY.