Suggestion to overhaul the photo/syncing/organizing system on the iPhone

Question

I am currently going through and organizing my camera roll's photos into different photo albums, and I realized that the way photo organization is currently implemented is simply NOT up to Apple's standard of usability (****, it's not even up to Microsoft's....)
Not only can I not directly transfer images from the Camera Roll to an album of my choice directly on the iPhone, I can't even do that from within iTunes nor can I create albums directly on the iPhone (why not!????). The only way I can do that on Windows 7 is by manually creating folders outside of iTunes, and then syncing them.
But that got me thinking that not even the album approach to organizing photos is good. Say for instance I want to organize my photos by both people AND places. For instance I go on a trip and have a photo of a friend. In order to place that photo in an album for that trip, as well as place that photo of my friend in an album for that friend, I need to have TWO instances of the same photo, which takes up twice the space on my phone. Furthermore, I have to clone it manually via Windows etc.
What the iPhone needs is a simple, tried and true image tagging system, whereby the photo albums are not physical albums, they're simply based off of tags. This means the same photo can appear in multiple albums without requiring multiple instances of it on the phone.
Further, photos then become search-able via the phone's search spotlight. Currently the albums are not even search-able, let alone specific images. But if image tagging were to be implemented, it would allow particular "albums" to show up in the search results.
So rather than adding the ability to create albums via the phone and to move images from the Camera Roll to a particular album, you simply allow the user to create a bunch of pre-defined tags which can show up in a list when you go to tag each photo.
If Apple's feeling really ambitious, it could use the multi-select approach the camera role uses for sharing/deleting. Select a bunch of images, and apply the same tag(s) to all of them.
Meanwhile the current list of "albums" would appear exactly as it does now, except those albums would simply be based off the tags.
Anyway, there's no real point to this post other than to rant about how utterly poor the usability of the photo organization system is on an otherwise well thought-out device, and to offer a solution to fix it.

Answer 1

The sync process for photos is for the most part is centered around using iPhoto on a Mac, or with using a supported 3rd party photo management app on a PC.
Photos in the iPhone's Camera Roll are designed to be imported by your computer as with any other digital camera. iPhoto supports importing photos from any digital camera including from the iPhone's Camera Roll. iPhoto includes a places and faces feature. In order for a photo to be available in an available iPhoto album, event, places, and faces, the photo must be in the main iPhoto library. A photo in an iPhoto album, event, places, and faces is not duplicated and can be in all 4 categories. A photo in an album event, places, and faces includes a pointer to the original photo stored in the iPhoto library. The same with iTunes playlists. You can't have a song in an iTunes playlist unless the song is in the main iTunes library, and a song can be in multiple playlists without being duplicated. A song in an iTunes playlist is not duplicated.
What the iPhone needs is a simple, tried and true image tagging system, whereby the photo albums are not physical albums, they're simply based off of tags. This means the same photo can appear in multiple albums without requiring multiple instances of it on the phone.
Already done this way with iPhoto on a Mac, and should be the same when using a 3rd party photo management application on a PC.