From the Enchanta journal
How to make a family yearbook
A family yearbook is the easiest book to describe and one of the hardest to finish. The subject is chosen for you, and so is the deadline. What is not chosen is which of the year's photos are in it, and that is the whole job.
If you only need one answer
An annual photo book needs one year, one editor, and the photos you would miss. Choose the year's boundary, let one person make the cuts, and print it before the next year has built its own pile. To choose as the year goes instead of all at once, use the month-by-month planner below.
Gather the year's photos
Start with the photos taken within your chosen year. Gather them from each phone, shared album, and folder before choosing. Shared copies and bursts can show the same moment several times, so the number in the folder tells you little about the book's length.
Keep a photo when it adds a person, event, or ordinary detail you want to remember. Set aside repeats as you go. The guide to finishing a photo book explains how to make those choices when the folder feels too large.
Choose the year’s boundaries
The reason to make the same book every year is that the decision is already made. You are never asking what the book is about. A shelf of annual books lets you see the family changing across years. Read the case for one book a year.
It does not have to be January to December. A school year works. So do the twelve months since the last book. What matters is that the boundary is fixed before you start choosing, because a year with soft edges quietly becomes "the good photos", which has no end.
A month-by-month family yearbook planner
The cut is smaller when it happens a month at a time. At the end of each month, do three things with that month's photos, and write the result in the planner. Printing this page prints only the planner.
- Collect. Move the month's photos from every phone and camera into one album, so the month is in one place before anything is chosen.
- Select. Pick the few frames you would miss if they were gone, one per moment. Leave the rest where they are; nothing is deleted.
- Check. Note who is missing from the month, and any day that mattered with no photo of it. That is next month's reminder, not a failure.
| Month | What happened | Frames kept | Who or what is missing | Done |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | ||||
| February | ||||
| March | ||||
| April | ||||
| May | ||||
| June | ||||
| July | ||||
| August | ||||
| September | ||||
| October | ||||
| November | ||||
| December |
The year does not have to start in January. Begin at the first row of your own year, such as the start of school or the month after the last book.
- Month
- March
- What happened
- A snow day. A cousin's birthday. Nothing else anyone would name.
- Frames kept
- The sled at the top of the hill, the cake before the candles, the empty street that morning.
- Who or what is missing
- The parent holding the phone, who is in none of them.
At the end of the year
- Every month has at least one kept frame, including the quiet ones.
- Each of the family's leads appears across the year, not only in one season.
- The trip, if there was one, has not crowded out the months around it.
- The missing column has been read once, for photos that exist on someone else's phone.
Then the kept frames are the book's starting pile, and the cut below begins from them instead of from a whole year's camera roll.
Who is in it
Every family year has leads, a supporting cast, and people who were there once. A yearbook that gives all three the same space reads like a contact sheet, and one that only shows the leads is not a family book. Leads, supporting cast, passersby is about setting that balance deliberately rather than letting the camera roll set it, which always over-represents whoever was easiest to photograph.
If you are gathering photos for next year's book, photographing a year on purpose starts with the ordinary rooms, days, and people a camera roll often misses.
If the year lives on several phones, put the photos in one timeline before making the cut. You can decide which moments belong only after you can see the whole year together.
The chapters a year already has
A year arrives with its own structure, which is the yearbook's main advantage over a book with no boundaries. Seasons, the trip, the birthdays, the first day of school, the long ordinary weeks in between. Chapters are where that structure becomes readable, and dates and places are how a book says when something happened without turning into a caption exercise.
The cut, which is the actual work
Ask whether you would miss each photo if you removed it from the book. Keep it if it adds something you want to remember. If another photo already carries that moment, choose between them before moving on.
When several photos show the same moment, choose the one that best carries the person, expression, or action you want to remember. One moment, one frame is how to pick between near identical shots without stalling on each pair, and what to do with the photos you cut is the answer to the fear underneath the stalling, which is that cutting a photo deletes it. It does not.
Choose one editor
Choose one person to make the final selection. Ask the family for photos and memories they want in the book, then let them review the draft for missing people or moments. One editor, not a committee is about how to take other people's memories into the book without handing over the cut.
When one year wants to be two books
Sometimes a year has a three week trip in the middle of it, and the trip crowds out the other eleven months. That is a sign the trip is its own book, not that the year needs more pages. When a book wants to be two covers the split, and a trip of its own is where the three weeks go. Making a travel photo book is the same job with the edges already drawn for you.
Finishing it
Length follows the cut. The photo book calculator turns a number of kept photos into pages and spreads, the size chart covers what shape suits that length, and paper and binding helps you choose a binding for how the book will be handled and whether you want photos to run across a spread.
Then end it on purpose. How to end a photo book matters more in a yearbook than anywhere else, because next year's volume starts where this one stopped.
Questions people ask
What is a family yearbook?
One printed book covering one year of a family's life, made again the next year and the year after. The subject is decided in advance, which makes it repeatable. You are never choosing what the book is about, only which of the year's photos are in it.
Is an annual photo book the same as a family yearbook?
Yes. Both gather one year of family photos into a printed book. The year can run from January to December, across a school year, or from one birthday to the next. Choose the boundary before sorting so the book has a clear ending.
How many photos should a family yearbook have?
Around forty to ninety kept photos gives a year room without padding. Below about twenty it reads as a card rather than a book. The number is set by how much survives the cut and how densely the pages are laid out, not by how many photos the year produced, so it is worked out from the book you have in mind.
When is the right time to make it?
Whenever you will actually finish it. January works well, while the year is closed and still recent. Choosing a little each month, with a planner, makes the January cut smaller. A yearbook does not have to run January to December either. A school year, or the twelve months since the last book, is a year.
What if I am several years behind?
Make the most recent year first, not the oldest. Starting at the beginning means the hardest, least remembered pile comes first and the habit dies there. One finished book is also the thing that makes the next one feel possible.
Should each child get their own book?
Usually not, at least not as the yearly book. A year of a family is one story with several people in it, and splitting it by person removes the thing a yearbook is for, which is everyone in the same year. A book about one person is a different book, and worth making on its own terms.
The photos are on several phones. How do those get into one book?
They have to be put back in order before anything can be chosen from them. Photos of the same day from two devices arrive with different clocks, different time zones and sometimes no location at all, so merging is a step of its own rather than a detail.
Make a book from this year’s photos.
Enchanta is opening soon. Its private AI editor helps shape your photos and memories into a first draft you can change before printing.
Join the founding waitlist