Make a photo book in India, print it anywhere

A local studio can print beautifully, but the result depends on what you bring. A folder of phone photos means someone else does the layout, on their schedule and to their taste. A low-resolution export from a phone app prints soft. A file in the wrong colour space prints dull.

Kathaleaf's download avoids all three. You lay out every spread yourself, and you get a 300 dpi PDF with 3 mm of bleed on every edge, in two versions: one already converted to CMYK (FOGRA39) for a printing press, and one in RGB for an inkjet or home printer. Making the book and downloading the PDF is free, with no watermark. You pay only the shop that prints it.

Your photos are not uploaded to make it. Kathaleaf works in the browser on a phone or a computer, imports iPhone HEIC photos and photos from Google Drive directly, and needs only a free sign-in with Google or a passkey.

With the PDF comes a one-page specification sheet. Print it or send it along with the file on WhatsApp or by email: it states the trim size, the bleed, the page count, the resolution and the colour space, and the instructions that matter most. When you talk to the shop:

• Give them the file ending in -cmyk.pdf for a press. The other PDF is for home printers.
• Ask them to print at 100%. “Fit to page” shrinks the book and crops every edge.
• Ask for a single test spread before the full book, and check skin tones in daylight.
• Agree the paper, binding and cover finish before they start, and get the price in writing.

Prices vary a great deal between cities, shops and binding styles, so ask two or three places for a quote with the spec sheet in hand. The sheet makes the quotes comparable: everyone is pricing the same book.

Kathaleaf offers two book sizes: A4 landscape (297 × 210 mm), a size every print shop works with, and a 12-inch square, a classic for wedding albums. Each comes with 40, 50 or 60 interior pages plus the front and back cover.

A 12-megapixel phone photo comfortably fills a full A4 page at 300 dpi. A full page of the 12-inch square needs more pixels than that, so Kathaleaf flags photos that are too small for a full page when you import them; they still print well smaller on the page or in a collage.

For the pages, 170 to 250 gsm silk or matte paper feels like an album without making the book too stiff to open. Layflat binding, often called photobook binding, lets a photo cross the middle of a spread without disappearing into the spine; perfect binding is cheaper and fine for a thinner book. Lamination on the covers protects them from humidity and handling. The print guide goes through each choice, and how to print and bind at home.

The books people make most are the ones with the most photos behind them: a wedding across several functions, a Diwali or a family reunion, a trip, a child's first year. Kathaleaf's cull stage groups bursts and near-duplicates and flags blurry shots, so getting from a thousand photos to the sixty that belong in the book is quick. See the guides to a DIY wedding album and a baby photo book for ideas on each.

If English is not the first language at home, you can still write captions the way your family speaks: names, places and dates in the words you would use. Check the Proof stage carefully before you export, because the shop will print exactly what is in the file.

Many people in India do most of their photography on a phone, and that is fine for a printed book. Shoot in good light, keep the original files rather than the compressed copies a messaging app sends around, and add those originals to Kathaleaf: they carry the full resolution a print needs.

Kathaleaf is also preparing its own premium hardcover printing, delivered across India. It is not open yet; until it is, the PDF is the finished product, and any printer in the country can make it.