How to Choose Photos for a Photo Book, From 2,000 to 90

6 September 2026 · 6 min read · By Kaushal Sharma · guides, photos, travel

A two-week trip on two phones comes home as about 2,000 photos and one vague plan to do something with them. This post is a working method for how to choose photos for a photo book, the same one we use when a Classic has room for about 100 and the phone has room for none. You will get a habit that does half the work before you land, a rule for cutting duplicates, a reason to keep the blurry shot of your father laughing, and a 60/30/10 split that stops the book becoming ninety views of one lake. There is a checklist near the end.

Why choosing is harder than making

The book itself is easy now. You upload, the layout engine puts the photos in the order they were taken, and you move what you want. The part that stalls people is the folder of 2,000. Nobody wants to look at all of them, so nobody looks at any of them, and the trip stays on the phone.

The fix is to turn it into a few small passes, each one easy, instead of one big judgement.

Start favouriting on the way home

Do not wait for a free Sunday. Use the flight, the train, the back seat of the cab. Open the camera roll and tap the heart on anything that makes you stop scrolling. Do not think about the book yet.

Be greedy. If you finish with 250 hearts out of 2,000, that is a good result. You have dropped most of the trip in an hour and it did not hurt, because you never said no to anything.

If the trip is already six months old, do it in one sitting, on the phone, with your thumb. The moment you move to a laptop and start making folders, it becomes a project, and projects get postponed.

Cut duplicates before you cut bad photos

Now go through the hearts. Nearly all of us take the same photo four times: the same view, the same pose, one with sunglasses and one without. Pick one and unheart the rest. Do not agonise. If two are equally good, take the one where somebody is doing something.

Duplicates first, because the bad photos are easy and you will get to them anyway. This pass usually takes 250 down to about 150 without losing a single moment.

Keep the imperfect people shots

This is the pass where most people go wrong. They delete the photo where the eyes are half shut, the one where the horizon tilts, the one where Mummy is talking with her hands. They keep the one where everyone faced the camera and smiled on the count of three.

Keep the imperfect one. In a book, the posed shot is the one you flip past. The one with the hand mid-sentence is the one you stop at, because that is what she actually looks like.

A customer of ours, Prinshul, printed his parents’ UK trip and filmed them opening the book. Their reactions became our first reel. People react to people. Nobody films their mother’s face while she looks at a photo of a bridge.

The rule: a slightly bad photo of a person beats a perfect photo of a place. Sharpness matters less than you think at A4. Expression matters more.

Keep the establishing shots

An establishing shot is the film term for the wide frame that tells you where you are: the hotel entrance, the road into the hill town, the airport board, the first look at the sea. On the phone they look boring next to the close-ups. In the book they do the job a caption would otherwise have to do.

Keep one per place. Put it at the start of that section, and everything after it makes more sense. If you want two lines under it, the caption ideas we use for travel books are short enough that they will not fight the photo.

One per meal

Food photos multiply. You took nine of the thali and three of the chai. Keep one per meal, and pick the one with a hand or a face in it over the one where the plate sits centred and alone. The thali is a detail. The hand reaching for the roti is a memory.

The same logic applies to markets, sunsets and monuments. One good sunset per trip, not one per evening.

What is the 60/30/10 rule for a photo book?

It is the split we aim for once the hearts are down to about 150 and you need to reach the real number. Roughly 60 percent people, 30 percent places, 10 percent details.

People means anyone you travelled with, in any state. Places means the establishing shots and the views. Details means the thali, the ticket stub, the hotel key, the signboard you laughed at.

It is a rough guide, not arithmetic. If your shortlist is 60 percent views and 10 percent people, you have made a guidebook to somewhere you can visit again, not a book about a trip that will not happen again.

Across our three books:

If you are still deciding which of those numbers is yours, there is a longer answer on how many photos a photo book should have. Sizes and prices are on the pricing section.

The checklist

1. Heart anything you like on the way home. Aim for 200 to 250 from 2,000.
2. Cut duplicates. Keep the one where somebody is doing something.
3. Protect the imperfect people shots. A blurry laugh beats a posed smile.
4. Keep one establishing shot per place and open each section with it.
5. One per meal, one sunset per trip, one of each monument.
6. Count what is left. Sort it roughly into people, places, details.
7. Trim towards 60/30/10 until you hit the number for your book.
8. Stop. Do not go back into the 2,000 looking for what you missed.

Step 8 is the one people skip. Add the one photo you forgot if you must, then close the camera roll.

Do this one thing next

Do step one tonight. Not the whole method, just the hearts. It takes an hour on the phone, no laptop, no decisions, and once it is done the rest takes an evening.

When the shortlist is ready, the phone-to-book walkthrough covers uploading and rearranging. Or upload the hearts straight into app.apnistories.com: the layout engine puts them in the order they were taken, shows a page-by-page preview, and you swap whatever you like.

Questions people ask

Should I choose photos before or after uploading? Before, on the phone, using favourites. Choosing by thumb on the camera roll is faster than choosing on a page preview, and you upload a shortlist instead of the whole trip.

What if I have too many good people shots? Then you have a good trip and a full book. Cut the ones where the same two people stand in the same spot, keep the ones where the expression differs, and let the places drop below 30 percent. People first, always.

Do blurry photos print badly? A little softness prints fine at A4 and is barely noticed in a 10x10 inch square. What looks bad in print is a heavily cropped screenshot, not a slightly moving laugh.

How many photos go on each page? Up to 4 per page side on all three books. The layout engine builds the pages, and you move or swap anything you do not like.

Can I go over the photo count? Yes. Any book takes up to 10 extra pages at ₹40 per page. Edit first though; extra pages are for the trip that genuinely needs them.

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