Wedding album calculator: how many photos you need

How to use it

Choose your album size, type the number of sheets or pages from your album maker's quote, pick how full the pages are, and tick your functions. With a 40-sheet 12 × 36 album, balanced layouts and five functions, it says about 240 to 320 photos.

If you do not know the number of sheets yet, try 30, 40 and 50 and see how the range moves. That alone helps you decide which package to ask for.

Add any function the list does not have: a tilak, a baraat, a cocktail night, a puja at home. Tick "A parents' album too" to see a second, smaller range for the family's book.

What the answer means

The answer is a range, not a target. The low end is what fits if your album maker gives each photo room; the high end is what fits if they pack the spreads. Somewhere in that range is an album that feels full without feeling crowded.

Use the split by function as a starting point for the conversation, not a quota. If the sangeet was the night everyone remembers, move photos to it. If the haldi was twenty minutes in the courtyard, it may need only a sheet.

The rules of thumb behind it

The calculator multiplies the number of sheets by a rule-of-thumb number of photos per sheet, then adjusts for the album's size. These are rules of thumb from how Indian album layouts usually look, not measurements of any one album maker.

Smaller albums hold fewer photos per sheet because there is less paper on each spread. The calculator scales the numbers like this:

Album sizes it knows

Pick the open size of your album, the size of the spread when the book lies flat. If your album maker quotes a closed size, a 12 × 18 album opens to 12 × 36.

How it splits the album by function

Each function gets a weight, and the photos are shared by weight. The pheras get the biggest share because they hold the most rituals; a function you add yourself counts as a smaller one. Untick a function and its share goes to the others.

These weights reflect what usually happens at each function, not what should. A wedding where the reception was the big night should give the reception more.

Sheets or pages

A sheet is one open spread, two facing pages. Most Indian album makers quote sheets; some quote pages. If you type pages, the calculator halves them and rounds up, so 81 pages becomes 41 sheets.

When two quotes look alike, check this first. Forty sheets and forty pages are very different albums.

The parents' album

A parents' album is usually smaller and fuller of family. The calculator shows it at about 40 to 60 percent of your album, a rule of thumb for a book about half the size.

Choose it differently from yours. Fewer portraits of the two of you, more of the rituals the parents performed and the relatives who travelled for them.

Three albums, worked out

Here is what the calculator says for three common albums, with all five functions ticked. Use them to check your own answer looks sensible.

A smaller, airier book is not a worse album. It is a different one: fewer photos, each given room. You might choose that for yourselves, and a fuller one for the family.

When the calculator is wrong

It is wrong whenever your album maker says so. Their layouts, their paper and their way of building a spread decide what fits, and some fit far more or far less than these rules of thumb.

So use the range to ask good questions, then ask your album maker for their own number. If they say "about 300 for 40 sheets", that number wins.

Sharing it with the family

Press "Copy for WhatsApp" and paste it in the family group. It copies the range, the split by function and the parents' album if you asked for one, with a note that the album maker has the final say.

Everyone sees the same plan, and nobody asks later why the mehendi has only two sheets.

After you have the number

Choosing that many photos from the folder is the hard part. Phopho and Toto takes the folder your photographer sent, up to 12,000 photos, finds the two of you, sorts every photo by function and makes the first album at the size you choose. Usually 35 to 70 minutes once your photos are in.

Type the number this calculator gave you as your album size, change how many photos each function gets, then keep, love, swap or set aside any photo before you send it to your album maker.

Questions people ask