Google Photos — An Easy Way to Organize and Create a Yearbook

Need to plan, organize, and create beautiful, customized yearbooks for your organization? Mixbook.com offers a simple step-by-step process for creating yearbooks (with unlimited photo storage) for your classroom, sports team, or other group yearbook photos. Did you know you can use photo sharing sites like Google Photos to easily organize and share your organization’s images for Mixbook projects like yearbooks?

The Best Way to Organize Photos for Yearbook Projects — Plan Ahead

If you’ve never used a photo share site like Google Photos to organize your photos into albums, it’s a great way for teachers, volunteers, or recreational group leaders to start the school year or summer season. Make it a habit, after every event, to review your photos and create, name, and date an album in your Google Photos account.  Albums might include photos from field trips, holiday celebrations, special projects, clubs, team games, or individual and group class photos. Don’t have a Google Photo account? Read on to find out how to set one up.

How to Create a Google Photo Album

Google Photos is one of the best photo-sharing websites to store and share photos because you can store up to 15GB of images for free. If you run out of room, it’s very easy and affordable to purchase additional storage space.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to set up a Google Photo account:

1. Create your own Gmail account if you don’t already have one. If you’ve ever signed in to any Google product in the past (Gmail, Maps, or YouTube) you may already have a Google Account.
2. One of the best ways to organize photos for projects is to create albums. Locate “Albums” on the menu bar on the left side of the page and then select “Create Album.”
3. You will be prompted to “Add a Title” for your new photo album, then click “Select Photos” to add images to the album from your existing photo library.
4. Once the photos have been added and the album is saved, you will be able to easily import that album into your Mixbook project.

How to Import Your Photos and Albums From Google Photos

In this example, we’ll show you the steps to import photos from Google Photos, but the steps for importing from other photo share sites are going to be very similar:

To import an entire album from Google Photos:

• Log in to your Mixbook account (or create one).
• Click “My Photos” then “Add Photos.”
• A popup window will appear. At the bottom of the window, there are choices to “Import from other services,” including Facebook, Instagram, Google Photos, and SmugMug — Click “Google Photos.”

• Another popup window will appear with “Choose an Account” — select the email associated with your Google account.

• Once you’ve selected your Google account, another popup will ask you to “select what Mixbook can access” — Check the box for “View your Google Photos Library,” and at the bottom, “Continue.”

• The window should now show your Google photo albums listed on the left-hand side, click on the album you want to import, and click the “Select All” box at the top of the photos in that album, then click “Add Photos.”

• A bar will appear along the bottom of the window showing thumbnails of the photos in that album. Click the red button on the right “Add to My Photos.”
• A green status bar will show “Uploading Photos,” and when the photos have been uploaded to your account, you can select them individually for use or “Add Photos to Album” in your Mixbook account. You can use the same name the album had in Google Photos or choose a new title.

You now have a new Mixbook album of your Google Photos to use in your yearbook project.

Ordering Multiple Copies of Your Yearbook Project

Mixbook offers volume discounts on bulk orders (10 or more) of yearbooks (and calendars!). Here is the step-by-step process for receiving a custom quote for multiple copies of your yearbook project:

1. Click “Request a Quote” on the Yearbook page.
2. Follow the prompts requesting the specifics for your book, contact information, potential order date, etc.
3. The Mixbook team will respond to you in one business day with your custom quote and ordering instructions.

How to Get Personalized Assistance Creating Your Yearbook

The process of creating a yearbook with your Google Photo albums and Mixbook’s online editor is very easy. However, if you need help or have questions at any point in your project, feel free to email us at sales@mixbook.com.

Start Organizing Your Yearbook Photos Today

The best way to organize photos for projects like yearbooks is to start right away. Immediately after your next event, party, game, or field trip, review all your photos, select the best ones for use in your yearbook, and save them in an appropriately titled album. You can take the extra step of uploading that album to your Mixbook project or “My photos” to make it even easier on yourself when it comes time to create your book.  Get started on your yearbook project today!