At some point a few years ago, I basically stopped deleting email. Not the spam, obviously, or the marketing emails. But everything of actual substance, I basically still keep. That’s years of emails, with lots with attachments and important (at least to me) pictures. Enter Lost Photos, a great app that helps your retrieve all the photos from your inbox, even the ones you may have forgotten about completely.

Basically, Lost Photos is an app that finds all the photos you’ve sent or received from an email account. Then it gives you the option of how to use them. Facebook or Twitter is an option, but I like the “archiving” feature that lets you import to iPhoto, so you can keep and organize all those photos in one place. (For more info on backing up photos from across your social networks, check out Picturelife.)

The app will work on lots of different email service providers, including Gmail, Yahoo, mac.com, att.net, aol.com, any account routed through Google Apps and more. To check whether your email account is compatible, visit their website.

Lost Photos is available for both Mac and PC. PC users should download directly from the Lost Photos website, while Mac users can pay $2.99 to download it from the Mac App store. Considering how many hours it would take to find and archive those photos manually, a measly $3 seems totally worth it.