Discrete lattices play an important role in research, from condensed matter physics to quantum mechanics. Light-matter interaction in various types of artificially engineered, or synthetic, photonic structures provides a versatile platform to implement discrete lattices. More interestingly, such photonic structures also inspire novel schemes for the transformation and detection of photon states in both classical and quantum regimes. In the seminar, I will summarize theoretical and experimental results on manipulating and measuring photon states based on three generalized types of photonic lattices: all-dielectric nanostructured metasurfaces, integrated waveguides and the so-called spectral photonic lattices – a grid of interacting discrete frequencies driven by nonlinear frequency conversion. More specifically, I will mainly focus on the manipulation and detection of optical coherence in two-mode coupled PT photonic structures, synthesis of multi-dimensional space by mapping to lower-dimensional structure, and measurement of multi-photon quantum-polarization states with all-dielectric metasurfaces.