I would like to take a photo from the Camera Roll and assign it to a certain album. I don't want to delete the photo, I just want to change that little tiny attribute in which album it belongs.
According to the AlAsset Class Reference, photos are only editable if they were created by my own app. Does this mean that I can't change their album?
Would the only way to assign a photo to an album to make a duplicate of it, as suggested in this post? Is there anyway to not make a duplicate of a photo and just put it into an album?
If I put photos from my camera roll into albums or events with iPhoto on my Mac, they will disappear from the camera roll. Is there any way to do the same via the iOS SDK?
I hope i understand your question corectly, but I think the best way to do it would be to save the taken photo in a custom album. Martin tudorov has written a tutorial on this subject which I find very useful. It is designed for iOS 5 but I don't think there is much of change and you can tweak it for iOS 6 if you want. There is a sample project as well. Anyway here is the link to the tutorial which explAns it all and I hope it helps you solve your issue.
http://www.touch-code-magazine.com/ios5-saving-photos-in-custom-photo-album-category-for-download/