Photo Book Size Guide to A4 and 10x10 Square in India

6 September 2026 · 6 min read · By Kaushal Sharma · guides, sizes, prices

Most people pick a photo book size the way they pick a phone case: whatever looks fine in the thumbnail. Then the book arrives and the portrait shots are cropped at the forehead, or the square book crops a Ladakh sky at both sides. This photo book size guide is the one I give friends who ask. It covers what A4 and 10x10 inch square each do well, how many photos fit in each, what they cost, and which size to pick for which trip.

The two sizes, in your hands

A4 is the size of an office printout, 210x297 mm, held tall. Our A4 books are portrait, so the page is taller than it is wide.

The Zine is a 10x10 inch square, 254x254 mm. Set it beside the A4 sheet and it is wider by about four centimetres and shorter by about four, with a touch more page area overall. Two different shapes, not a big one and a small one.

Both come as hardcovers with a gloss laminate cover, printed on glossy art paper. The paper and the cover do not change between sizes. Only the shape, the page count and the price do.

Portrait phone photos or landscape: which size suits them?

Open your camera roll and scroll. Most phone photos are portrait, because that is how you hold the phone.

A portrait phone photo on an A4 portrait page is a natural fit. It fills the page with only a small crop. Landscape photos still work on A4: two stack neatly on one page, or one wide shot runs across a spread.

A square page is a compromise for both orientations. A single portrait photo on 10x10 inch loses a strip at the top or bottom to fill the page, and a single landscape photo loses a little at the sides. Where the square works well is grids. Two portraits side by side, or four photos in a 2x2, sit on a square page with a balance that A4 never quite manages.

My honest rule: if most of your photos are portrait phone shots, and most people’s are, go A4. If your set is a mix and you like several photos per page, 10x10 inch is a happy book.

Either way the layout engine does the first pass. It builds the pages in the order the photos were taken, and you see a page-by-page preview before you pay. If a crop bothers you, move or swap the photo.

Coffee table or shelf?

An A4 hardcover is a coffee table book. It sits open on the table, gets picked up by guests, and gets opened again during the next power cut.

A 10x10 inch book is a square coffee table book. It sits flat and open, travels well to a relative’s house, and three or four Zines over a couple of years line up on a shelf like a set.

Gift or keep?

For a gift, the square Zine at ₹1,499 is the easy answer. It fits a gift bag and 20 pages is enough to tell one trip. A customer named Prinshul printed his parents’ UK trip and filmed them opening the book. Their reactions became our first reel. What made it land was that somebody had paid attention, not the dimensions.

The exception is grandparents. One big photo per page reads better than a grid for older eyes, and a tall A4 page fits a portrait photo with almost no crop. For them I would pick A4, and our post on a photo book for grandparents goes into how to choose the photos.

For a book you plan to keep, A4 again, and if the trip had wide views, the lay-flat Heirloom. Lay-flat binding opens a full 180 degrees, so a mountain panorama can run across both pages with no photo lost in the gutter. The differences are laid out in our lay-flat vs standard photo book comparison.

Page counts, photo counts and prices

Here is the whole range on one table. Photo counts are what fits comfortably, with up to 4 photos on any page side.

Every book can take up to 10 extra pages at ₹40 a page. One fat book is nicer than two thin ones.

Two related reads if you are still counting: how many photos you need for a photo book walks through a 20, 26 and 32 page book with real numbers, and what a photo book costs in India covers the full price with delivery, which is free from us and tracked. The current prices are always on the pricing section of the home page.

Which size for which trip?

Different trips produce very different numbers of photos. A rough map:

• Weekend trip, two or three days, Jaipur, Rishikesh, Goa: 30 to 50 photos. The Zine. If you went over 40, the Classic.
• One week, Kerala backwaters, Himachal, Rajasthan circuit: 60 to 90 photos. The Classic.
• Ladakh, Spiti, Meghalaya, anywhere the view is the point: the Heirloom. Wide shots across a lay-flat spread are the reason to spend the extra ₹400.
• Two weeks abroad, Europe, UK, Vietnam: 100 plus photos. The Heirloom with extra pages.
• Wedding functions, a haldi, a mehendi, a reception: A4, because faces are portrait and there are a lot of them. Heirloom if you want the stage shots across spreads.
• Baby’s first year, one book every few months: the Zine, because you will make several and they look right side by side on a shelf.

How to decide in two minutes

1. Open the trip’s album on your phone. Notice whether the photos are mostly tall or mostly wide. Mostly tall means A4.
2. Count the photos you would actually print, not the ones you took. Under 40, the Zine. 40 to 90, the Classic. 90 to 120, the Heirloom.
3. Ask where the book will live. On a table, A4. On a shelf or in a gift bag, 10x10 inch.
4. Ask whether any photo deserves two pages. If yes, the Heirloom.
5. Upload the photos, let the engine build the book, and look at the preview. Check the crops on your ten favourite photos. If they look right, order.

Start with the photos, not the size

The size question feels big before you start and small once you see a preview. So do not decide it in your head. Pick the album, upload it at app.apnistories.com, and let the pages show you. The book takes a few minutes to build, is printed in Delhi NCR, and arrives anywhere in India in about a week, tracked and with no delivery charge.

Questions people ask

Is A4 or 10x10 inch better for phone photos? A4 portrait, for most people. Phone photos are mostly tall, and a tall page fits them with almost no crop. Pick 10x10 inch if your set is mixed and you like several photos per page.

How many photos fit in a 10x10 inch photo book? The Zine has 20 pages and holds about 80 photos, with up to 4 photos on a page side. You can add up to 10 extra pages at ₹40 each.

What is the largest photo book size at Apni Stories? A4, 210x297 mm. The Heirloom is the biggest book: 32 pages, lay-flat binding, 128 photos, plus up to 10 extra pages.

Can I add pages to the square book? Yes. Any book, including the Zine, takes up to 10 extra pages at ₹40 a page.

Are both sizes hardcover? Yes. All three books are hardcover with a gloss laminate cover and glossy art paper. The Heirloom adds lay-flat 180 degree binding.

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