Picking is the part nobody warns you about. Taking photos is easy; deciding which ones deserve paper is where most monthly books stall. The trick is to make several quick passes rather than one slow one, and to decide before you start how many photos the month actually needs.
Quick tip: star photos on your phone as you take them. Picking takes half the time at the end of the month.
My mum reads the captions more than she looks at the pictures.
Leila, who writes every caption by hand
Keep it simple
Start with the photos you would rescue from a fire. There are usually five or six, and they make every other choice easier because the month already has its anchors.
Do not compare every photo with every other photo. Compare each one only with its neighbours, keep the best of a small group and move on.
- Delete the obvious misses: blurs, pockets and thumbs.
- Star one photo per day, even on dull days.
- Pick the cover last, once the month has a shape.
Try it this month
Keep the rejected photos somewhere safe for a while. Tastes change, and a picture you passed over may be the one you want next year.
Ask someone else to look at your shortlist. They will spot the photo you were about to drop and the one you only kept out of habit.
| Print size | Smallest file | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Square page | 1800 × 1800 px | Single photos |
| Full spread | 3600 × 1800 px | Landscapes and groups |
| Quarter page | 900 × 900 px | Small moments |
What we got wrong
Write the year on the spine. It sounds obvious, but without it a shelf of books quickly becomes a puzzle.
If two photos are nearly the same, keep the one where someone is doing something. A raised hand, a turned head or a half-finished sentence gives a picture life that a perfectly still pose rarely has, even when the still one is technically better.
- Pick a fixed day each month
- Write a few words beside the best ones
- Back up before deleting anything
Why it works
Make a cup of tea, sit somewhere comfortable and put the phone on do-not-disturb. The job goes faster when it does not compete with messages.
If you have too many photos of one day, that day probably mattered. Give it a spread of its own rather than cutting it down to one.
A few small rules
Print sizes matter less than you think. A small photo surrounded by white space can feel more special than one stretched to fill the page.
Most people find the first month the hardest. You are learning what you like, and every photo feels important. By the third month you will notice yourself moving faster, trusting your first reaction and spending your time on the handful of close calls instead of on every single picture.
Good to know: every Paperleaf book has room for thirty photos, so there is no prize for keeping more.
We tried the one-photo-per-day rule last month and it made picking so much easier. Thank you!
Great question. Start with one photo per child per day and swap them on the second pass.
Lovely post. The bit about keeping the blurry photos made me go back and rescue a few.
I printed our first book after reading this and my daughter has not put it down since.
My grandmother cried when she got the book. That is all I wanted to say.
My grandmother cried when she got the book. That is all I wanted to say.
Great question. Start with one photo per child per day and swap them on the second pass.
This is exactly the nudge I needed. My camera roll has four thousand photos from this year alone.