PicLoomHow to turn a year's iPhone photos into a yearbook
November is the month the year starts to feel finished. Your camera roll already holds it: the trip in spring, the birthday in summer, and a hundred ordinary Tuesdays you forgot by Friday. A yearbook is what turns that pile into something you can hold on to: one page for each day worth keeping, bound into a book that sits on the shelf. You do not need a print shop or a long design evening. You need the photos you already kept, a line or two in your own words, and an hour or two spread over a few evenings. This guide builds a photo yearbook from your iPhone photos, the shelf kind that exports as a PDF book, and it starts with the days, not the software.
What a yearbook page actually is
A yearbook page is a day, not a dump. The test is simple: if you showed the page to someone who was not there, would they get the day from it? A page that passes has one moment, a few photos, and a line in your own words. A page that fails has forty photos and no reason. The photos do most of the work. Your line only has to say what the photos cannot: where you were, who was there, and why that day stayed with you.
There are two kinds of yearbook, and the difference matters before you start. A printed book is paper you order, pay for per copy, and wait for in the mail. A shelf book is the same idea kept digital: pages you can open any time, share as a file, and fix when you spot a typo. This guide builds the second kind. The pages look like paper, the book sits on a shelf in the app, and the finished year exports as a PDF. If you later want paper, the PDF is the file a print shop takes.
Pick the year's days first
Do not start by scrolling the whole roll. Start with the days you remember without looking. Make three passes. First, the big days: trips, birthdays, the day someone moved, the first snow. Second, the gatherings: look through your albums for the weekends with other people in them, the meals, the walks. Third, the ordinary days: a new café, the dog asleep in the sun, the street on the way home that looked different in October light. Ordinary days are what make a yearbook feel like your year instead of a highlight reel.
Aim for thirty to sixty pages, not three hundred and sixty-five. A yearbook is a selection, and the selection is the point. The days you skip are not lost. They are still in your camera roll. The book only holds the days you would actually show someone, and that limit is what makes it readable in one sitting. The days that do not make the book still matter. They are the raw material of the year, and they stay searchable in your albums. A yearbook does not replace the roll. It gives the roll a front door: the book is what you open first, and the roll is where you go when you want the rest.
Five steps, an hour or two
Step one: work from the photos you kept, not the raw roll. If you already sorted the year, even loosely, start there. If not, spend twenty minutes picking the keepers for the days on your list and let the rest wait. A yearbook built on an unsorted roll stalls at step one, because every page turns into a sorting job. Our guide to backing up before you delete is worth reading before you remove anything for good.
Step two: one page per moment. Lay the day's photos on the page and let the strongest one take the most room. Two to five photos is plenty. If a day has two moments, it gets two pages, and that is fine. Step three: add one line in your own words. A date, a place, and one sentence about what happened or how it felt. Do not write an essay. The page is a photo page, and the line is a caption with a pulse.
Step four: read the shelf in order. When a dozen pages are done, look at them as a book, not as separate days. Gaps are fine. A quiet month is a quiet month, not a failure, and a gap is easier to accept in a book than in a streak. Step five: export the book. When the year feels complete enough, export the whole book as a PDF and keep a copy outside the phone, so the yearbook does not depend on one device. Then the shelf holds it, and you can open it next November and remember what the year actually felt like.
Three ways to keep the year
| What matters | Printed photo book | Phone album | PicLoom shelf book |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form | Paper you order and wait for | A list of photos in an album | Pages like paper, kept in the app |
| Cost | Per book, plus shipping | Free | Free daily quota; whole books as PDF with Pro, one-time US$14.99 |
| Fixing a mistake | Reorder and reprint | Edit any time | Edit any time, re-export the PDF |
| Sharing | Hand over the copy | Share the album link | Share the book file; shared journals get a book of their own |
| Finding it again | On the bookshelf | Search the album name | Shelf of books by year |
| Best for | One gift copy | Quick browsing | A year you reread |
Five mistakes that stall a yearbook
First, trying to include everything. A yearbook with every photo is a camera roll with a cover, and nobody finishes it. Pick the days, then stop picking. Second, starting on December 31. The year is too big to face in one night. Start in November, a few pages per evening, and the book is done before the holidays. Third, sorting strictly by date. Dates are for the shelf order, not for choosing. Group by story first: the trip, the move, the summer of walks. The dates will line up on their own.
Fourth, deleting before the book is exported. Sorting and deleting in the same evening is how keepers disappear. Keep a second copy of the year before you remove anything, export the book, and only then tidy with confidence. Fifth, making it a solo project when the year belonged to two people. A trip, a move, a first year in a new flat: those years read better with two hands on them. A shared journal gives the year its own book, with both people's pages in it. Our guide to organizing travel photos after a trip is a good first test of the shape: one trip, a few pages, a book that almost makes itself.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to print the yearbook?
No. A shelf book lives in the app and exports as a PDF, which you can read, share, and keep outside the phone. Print it only if you want a paper copy, and the PDF is the file to print from.
How many photos should a page hold?
Two to five, around one moment. One strong photo with room to breathe beats six small ones fighting for attention. If the day has two moments, give it two pages.
I missed three months. Is it too late?
No. A yearbook is a selection, not a streak. Start with the days you remember, leave the gap as a gap, and add a page later if a photo turns up. A book with a quiet season still reads as a year.
Can two people build one yearbook?
Yes. A shared journal gets a book of its own, so both people's pages sit in the same year. It works best for the years you lived together: a trip, a move, a first year somewhere new.
What does it cost?
Writing pages every day is free, including shared journals. Whole books as PDF is a Pro feature, a one-time purchase of US$14.99. The App Store shows the final price for your region.
A year is not four thousand photos. It is thirty or forty days you would actually show someone, kept as pages, bound into a book. PicLoom is a photo journal app for iPhone: one day, one little page, with photos, stickers, tape, and a line of your own, plus shared journals and letters for the people in the photos. It is free to start with no account, and Pro is a one-time purchase of US$14.99 (the App Store shows the final price for your region). See the pricing page, then start from the download section.
