I need to manage photos in my app and have read much about SDWebImage framework which seems to be the best way to go. However I am finding it incredibly difficult to instal
You can use CocoaPods to manage libraries in your project.
To add SDWebImage to your project you should add this line to your pod file:
pod 'SDWebImage', '~>3.7'
UPD
To use CocoaPods, you should install it, to create it you can open Terminal and copy/paste this line:
sudo gem install cocoapods
On next step you should create Podfile in directory that contain your project file. Pods it is text file (you can create it by using xCode or other text editor (only do not use Writer, it uses not correct character for " ' ")).
After you've created Podfile, you should run in Terminal next line:
pod update
It command'll create a workspace file, this file you'll use to open your project. All instructions present on the home page of CocoaPods.