Guides · Sizes

Wedding album sizes and resolution in pixels

Which size to choose, how many pixels each spread needs for the lab and how far you can crop a photo before it shows in print. With a reference table and the formula to work it out yourself for any other size.

Updated 14 October 2026 · 6 minute read

1. Page and spread: the size you design

When a lab advertises a “12 × 12” album it means the page. But what you design, and nearly always what you send, is the spread: the two pages you see at once when the album is open. A 12 × 12 album has 24 × 12 in spreads.

Before starting, check with the lab whether it wants one file per spread or per page, and whether the cover goes separately. It's a one-minute question that saves redoing the export.

2. Common sizes and what each is good for

Every lab has its own catalogue. Labs in the US and UK tend to quote inches (8 × 8, 10 × 10, 12 × 12, 10 × 15…), and European labs centimetres (20 × 20, 30 × 30, 30 × 40…); the sizes are close but not identical, so always use your lab's exact figure. Almost all of them fall into three families:

• Square: 8 × 8, 10 × 10 and 12 × 12 in (20, 25 and 30 cm). The 12 × 12 is the most requested format for the main wedding album. The open spread is very wide (2:1), so it works beautifully with landscape photos across both pages and with layouts of three to six photos. The smaller squares are the usual size for parents' albums: the same design, scaled down.
• Landscape: around 14 × 10 in (35 × 25 cm). The spread is even longer. It suits documentary shooters or lots of scenery, but portrait-oriented photos end up small and are best grouped.
• Portrait: 8 × 12, 10 × 12, 10 × 14, 12 × 14 and 12 × 16 in (20 × 30 to 30 × 40 cm). Each page reads almost like a portrait. It's the most classic format, very comfortable for full-page vertical photos, and the one where the gutter shows least because layouts tend to respect each page separately.

If in doubt, pick the family by the way you shoot: if most of your best frames are landscape, go square or landscape; if they're portraits, go portrait.

3. Resolution: what 300 PPI means

PPI (pixels per inch, often loosely called DPI) is how many pixels of the image fit into each inch of paper. The formula is simply:

pixels = inches × PPI (or centimetres ÷ 2.54 × PPI)

At 300 PPI a 12-inch side is 3600 pixels. It's the resolution almost every photo lab asks for, and there's no point going higher: above 300 the eye can't tell the difference on photo paper and the file just gets heavier.

What does matter is each photo's effective resolution inside the spread: how many real pixels of the original land in each inch of the frame you put it in. A spread exported at 300 PPI can contain a photo that, because it's heavily cropped, really sits at 120. Between 200 and 300 effective PPI the difference is hard to see at reading distance; below 200 it starts to show in fine detail like hair or lace.

4. Table: pixels per spread at 300 PPI

Full spread (two pages), without bleed and with 3 mm (about ⅛ in) of bleed per side, which is the most common value. If your lab asks for a different bleed, add twice that value to the spread's width and height —one for each edge— before doing the maths.

The inch sizes are close equivalents, not the same thing: a true 12 × 12 in page is 30.48 cm, so its spread at 300 PPI is 7200 × 3600 pixels without bleed. Work from the exact figure on your lab's spec sheet.

5. How far can I crop a photo?

It depends on the frame it will fill. Taking a 24-megapixel camera (6000 × 4000 pixels) as a reference, on a 12 × 12 in album:

• Full page needs 3600 pixels per side. The photo's short side has 4000: it comes out at around 330 PPI, with a little room to crop.
• Across the whole spread, the photo has to cover 24 inches of width with its 6000 pixels: 250 PPI. It prints well, but there's no room to crop: halve it and you're at 125.
• In a small frame —a 4 × 4 in detail— there are pixels to spare everywhere: you can crop to a quarter of the photo and stay above 300 PPI.

The rule of thumb: photos that go big, keep them whole; photos that go small, crop as much as you like. And if a photo you love is short on resolution, make it smaller on the spread rather than dropping it.