Photobook creation driving me to the brink

[User415373]

I asked about this a couple of years ago and I still haven't been able to figure it out. I can't be the only person so please help me!

• I want to make a photo book of each year of family life, I started in 2021 and haven't done one since (because I got a new phone - more on that below!)
• On my previous phone (Huawei) I assume photos were stored locally. I made an album (Family 2021 or whatever) then went to photobox/Snapfish or similar. When prompted to add my photos, there was my 'Family 2021' album. So I could easily go in and add all my chosen pics, order the photo book, job done.
• In 2022 I got a pixel phone. Since then, this is my problem:
• Photos are stored in the cloud in Google photos
• I want to create a 'Family 2025' book

so trawl through thousands of pics and add them all to an album.

• The album visible in the Google pixel app.
• When I to a 3rd party site, and choose to add photos from Google photos, all I can see are my thousands of photos. I can't see the albums I have made.
• This means the thumbnails are tiny, it's really hard to see and select the ones I want in the book and I can't narrow it down to current year or anything. It would take forever.

So my question is, is there a photobook providers that can actually fully link with my Google photos and allow me to see the albums? I could order direct from Google ( under the 3 dots there's an option to order a book) but it puts one photo per page which makes the book hundreds of pages long and I can't seem to change their size and move pages etc. Or is there a way to make the album via Google photos, then download the album locally so it's visible to 3rd parties? I can't see a way to do this. Am I going to have to do it the long hard way?!

Sorry about the typos I'm wrangling a toddler and can't seem to edit!

Yes!!! Google photos books. You're right there aren't so many options to choose from to change photos, it's basically 1 or 2 per page in small books. Pretty sure you can choose 2, not just 1! But you can do it direct from the app on your phone (or computer if you prefer)! Took far less time than other websites I've used and good results. Pretty sure you can choose number of pages too.

Not the cheapest but google photo books solves this problem entirely so for me its worth the saving on wanting to kill my computer , its how we do our annual album as it just makes it directly from the google album. Slow delivery though but fine for personal use not gifting!

With Optimal Print I can see Google albums. Each year I make an album called "optimal print 2025" (or whatever year) and as the year goes along I add favoured photos it, so that when it comes to finalizing the book I have fewer photos to trawl through to finalise the selection.

Photobox lets you upload pictures from album on your phone to album on their site.

Have you tried snapfish ‘add photos from phone’ new feature? As opposed to connecting the phone and using it in a file manager way?

Yes but only if the album is stored locally which doesn't happen with Google photos or a Google phone. All I can see is 'camera photos' 'whatsapp pictures'. I don't know why it's so hard for them to make it visible.