How to pick the best photos from your camera roll.
A working method for getting from thousands of photos to the few hundred you care about. The by-hand version comes first, then the assisted one. Both work; one of them scales.
The manual method (no app required)
- Work in slices, never the whole library. One trip, one month, one event. A finished slice is progress; a half-scrolled library is not.
- Two passes. On the first, cut the obvious failures fast: blur, accidental shots, duds. On the second, choose between the similars that remain.
- Settle near-identicals side by side. Open the burst, compare, keep exactly one. Don't put it off; deferred stacks are how the library got this way.
- Mark keepers as Favorites (or move them to an album) so the decision is recorded somewhere.
- Finish the slice, album filled and rejects dealt with, before opening the next one.
This works. It costs about an evening per thousand photos, which is the real reason most libraries never get done.
Why it breaks at scale
Three problems compound. Nothing is ranked, so every photo costs a full-price decision. Near-identicals are scattered, so comparing means hunting. And decision fatigue sets in long before the slice ends. The method is sound; the economics aren't.
Same method, pre-sorted.
SpectraSort runs the same five steps with the expensive parts done before you look. Pick a slice, whether that's a Scene, a time range or a subject search, and it comes back ranked with near-identicals already stacked.
Then review: swipe right to pick, down to keep, left to let go, or let Autopick choose and just skim its picks. Stacked similars sit on one wheel, so a burst takes one decision.
Batch Process finishes the slice in one screen: picks to an album or the share sheet, the rest cleared through the system dialog.
Details that keep it safe
A down-swipe just keeps the photo; declining to pick something never deletes it. Deletions happen only in Batch Process, go through the system confirmation dialog, and sit in Recently Deleted for 30 days. The ranking itself runs on your iPhone's Neural Engine, so nothing is uploaded.
- The method still ends with your judgment. SpectraSort shortens the review; it doesn't make the decisions for you.
- iPhone only, iOS 18.5 or later. No iPad, Android or desktop version.
- The first index of a big library takes a while. It only happens once.
- Deleted photos spend 30 days in iOS's Recently Deleted album, so the storage comes back later, not right away. SpectraSort doesn't show a “GB freed” number because it would be a guess.
Free to try. $19.99 once to keep.
Five sorts a week are free, forever, with no account and no credit card. Premium is a single $19.99 purchase that removes the cap and unlocks Studio. No subscription, ever. Built by an indie dev who uses it daily.
Download on the App Store