Google Photos to Photo Book: Hearts, Albums and Bulk Upload
Most of the trip is already sitting in Google Photos. The phone backed it up while you slept in the hotel. The hard part is not finding the photos, it is getting them out in a shape that prints well, without tapping 300 thumbnails one at a time. This is a walkthrough for going from Google Photos to photo book on an Android phone: sorting with favourites and albums, checking the backup setting that decides how sharp the files are, selecting in bulk, and uploading to the book maker.
Sort inside Google Photos before you download anything
Do not download everything first and sort it in a folder later. Google Photos is a better sorting tool than any file manager because you see the pictures large, you swipe fast, and it already knows the date and the place.
Two tools do the job.
Favourites. Open a photo and tap the heart at the top. It goes into a Favourites album under the Collections tab (older versions of the app call this tab Library). Do this on the sofa, hearting anything that makes you pause. This is the long list, not the final cut.
Albums. Once the hearts are in, open Favourites, select the ones that belong to this book, tap the plus icon and choose Album. Name it for the trip, “Kerala Dec 2025” or whatever you will search for later. The album is now your shortlist, and it stays put even if you un-heart things afterwards.
If you want a stricter method for the final cut, the rules in how to choose photos for a photo book apply here too: one photo per moment, no near-duplicates, at least one wide shot of every place.
Aim for a number that fits the book. The Zine takes up to 80 photos, the Classic 104 and the Heirloom 128, so an album of 60 to 100 is a comfortable place to land for a week-long trip. Sizes and prices are on the pricing section if you would rather pick the book first and sort to fit.
Are Google Photos good enough to print?
Usually yes, but it depends on one setting most people have never opened.
Google Photos backs up in one of two modes. Open the app, tap your profile picture, go to Photos settings, then Backup, then Backup quality. You will see either Original quality or Storage saver.
Original quality keeps the file exactly as the camera made it. Storage saver compresses each photo and shrinks anything above 16 megapixels down to 16 megapixels. Google’s own wording for the result is slightly reduced quality.
A 16 megapixel file is still around 4,900 by 3,300 pixels, which prints sharply on an A4 page. Storage saver copies are fine for a photo book. What hurts them is heavy cropping: pull a small face out of a wide shot and the softening starts to show.
| Where the photo came from | What Google Photos holds | Prints at A4? |
|---|---|---|
| Your phone camera, Original quality backup | The full file | Yes, sharp |
| Your phone camera, Storage saver backup | Up to 16 MP, lightly compressed | Yes, avoid heavy crops |
| Received on WhatsApp, auto-saved to gallery | A heavily compressed copy | Small on the page only |
| A screenshot | Screen resolution, usually under 3 MP | No |
| A friend’s shared album | Whatever quality they backed up in | Depends, check the file size |
To check a single photo, open it and swipe up. The info panel shows the megapixels and the file size. A camera original from a recent phone is usually several MB. A file of a few hundred KB has been through WhatsApp. If the pixel maths interests you, the iPhone photos resolution post goes deeper, and the numbers are the same on Android.
If the photo was taken on this phone and you have never run Free up space, the full original is still in the camera folder whatever the backup setting says. The setting matters most for old photos where the local copy is long gone.
How do I download photos from Google Photos to my phone?
Once the album is ready, get the files onto the phone so the upload can see them.
- Open the album.
- Long press the first photo, then drag your finger down across the grid without lifting it. Google Photos selects everything you sweep over. Drag to the bottom and the whole album is ticked in a few seconds.
- Tap the three dots at the top right and choose Download. If you do not see Download, every selected photo is already on the phone and you can skip this step.
- Wait for the progress message at the bottom to finish. A hundred photos take a few minutes on a normal mobile connection.
Downloaded photos land in a folder on the phone, usually called Restored, inside DCIM or Pictures. It shows up as an album in the phone’s own picker, so you do not need a file manager.
Two things to watch. Do not use Share to send photos to yourself on WhatsApp as a way of moving them, that is the compression trap from the table above. And if the album has videos, untick them, a photo book cannot print a video.
For a giant archive, Google Takeout at takeout.google.com exports a whole album as a zip, but that is a laptop job. The phone route handles a couple of hundred photos without fuss.
Uploading to the book maker
Open app.apnistories.com in Chrome on the same phone and tap upload. The Android picker opens. Look for the Restored album, or for the trip album itself if your phone shows Google Photos directly inside the picker, which some newer Android phones do. Long press and drag to select everything, then confirm.
The layout engine reads the date each photo was taken and builds the book in that order, so the airport comes before the beach and the beach before the drive home. That works because Google Photos keeps the original date inside the file when you download. Screenshots and WhatsApp saves carry no date taken, so they may land in the wrong place. Move them by hand in the preview.
Then check the page-by-page preview, swap anything that landed on the wrong spread, and order. The full phone-side walkthrough is in how to make a photo book from your phone.
The one thing to do tonight
Open Google Photos, go to the trip, and heart 60 photos. Nothing else. Tomorrow, turn them into an album and check the backup setting. The download and upload take less time than the hearting did, and the book arrives in about a week.
Questions people ask
Can I make a photo book directly inside Google Photos in India? No. Google’s own print store, which sells photo books in some countries, is not offered in India at the time of writing. Download the photos and use an Indian photo book maker.
Does Storage saver ruin photos for printing? No. It caps photos at 16 megapixels, which is still more than enough for an A4 page. Avoid heavy crops on those files and they print fine.
Where do downloaded Google Photos go on Android? Into a folder usually called Restored, under DCIM or Pictures. It appears as an album in your phone’s photo picker, so you do not need a file manager.
Do I have to download every photo one by one? No. Long press one photo and drag across the grid to select many at once, then use Download from the three-dot menu. A hundred photos take a few minutes.
Will the book be in the right order if I use Google Photos? Yes, as long as the photos came from a camera. Downloads keep the original date taken, and the layout engine uses that. Screenshots and WhatsApp saves have no date taken, so move those by hand.
Your trip deserves better than a camera roll.
Upload your photos, the editor designs the book in minutes, and you approve every page before we print. Hardcover books from ₹1,499, free tracked delivery across India.
Start my book, free to design© 2026 Apni Stories · All guides · Compare · Shipping & returns · Privacy · RSS