HakoToolsPhoto Sheet Layout: Fit Multiple Photos on One Print
Printing photos one to a sheet wastes most of the paper and, at a kiosk, most of the money. Putting four or six on a sheet and cutting them apart costs one print instead of six — as long as the frames come out at the size you actually asked for.
Published: / Published by the HakoTools team
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How it works
What does a photo sheet layout do?
It arranges several photos into frames on one sheet of paper, at a size you choose in millimetres rather than whatever the printer driver decides. You print one sheet and cut the photos apart, instead of printing each one on its own page.
The measuring, cropping and encoding all happen in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, so family photos do not pass through anyone's server on the way to the paper.
How do you use it?
- Add your photos, then reorder or remove any of them
- Pick a sheet: 3.5 × 5 in (89 × 127 mm), 4 × 6 in (102 × 152 mm), 5 × 7 in (127 × 178 mm), A4 (210 × 297 mm), US Letter (215.9 × 279.4 mm)
- Pick how many frames go on it: 2-up (1 × 2), 4-up (2 × 2), 6-up (2 × 3), 9-up (3 × 3)
- Set the white border, the resolution and whether cut guides are drawn
- Download as JPEG or PDF, then print at 100% — not Fit to page
Which sheet size matches which photo size?
Two of the three sheet sizes are exact inch sizes wearing metric labels. 89 by 127 mm is 3.5 by 5 in to the millimetre, and 102 by 152 mm is exactly 4 by 6 in. The size that is missing is 4 by 6 in, the default at most US photo counters, which is 102 by 152 mm and sits between the two.
A4 is 127 by 178 mm (5 by 7 in). US Letter is not offered, and the difference matters more here than on most tools: the whole point of this one is that a frame comes out the size it says. Sending A4 output to a Letter tray and letting the driver fit it to the page shrinks every frame by about 6%, so a 5 by 7 print arrives at roughly 4.7 by 6.6 in.
How large is each frame?
Divide the sheet by the grid. With no white border, one frame measures:
| Sheet | 2-up (1 × 2) | 4-up (2 × 2) | 6-up (2 × 3) | 9-up (3 × 3) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.5 × 5 in (89 × 127 mm) | 89 × 63.5 mm | 44.5 × 63.5 mm | 44.5 × 42.3 mm | 29.7 × 42.3 mm |
| 4 × 6 in (102 × 152 mm) | 102 × 76 mm | 51 × 76 mm | 51 × 50.7 mm | 34 × 50.7 mm |
| 5 × 7 in (127 × 178 mm) | 127 × 89 mm | 63.5 × 89 mm | 63.5 × 59.3 mm | 42.3 × 59.3 mm |
| A4 (210 × 297 mm) | 210 × 148.5 mm | 105 × 148.5 mm | 105 × 99 mm | 70 × 99 mm |
| US Letter (215.9 × 279.4 mm) | 215.9 × 139.7 mm | 108 × 139.7 mm | 108 × 93.1 mm | 72 × 93.1 mm |
A white border is taken off all four sides of every frame, so a 5 mm border costs 10 mm of both width and height. Set it to 0 for edge-to-edge frames.
Crop to fill, or fit the whole photo?
Crop to fill gives you a full frame and throws away whatever does not fit; fit the whole photo keeps every pixel and pads the rest with white. Which one costs more depends entirely on how far the photo's shape is from the frame's. A landscape photo in a portrait frame is the worst case, and it is also the most common one.
The lesson is not that one mode is better. It is that a 3:2 photo and a portrait frame are fighting, and you fix that by choosing a frame shape close to the photo's — landscape orientation, or a layout whose frames are wider than they are tall.
What resolution do you need?
300 dpi is the usual target for prints held at reading distance, and the resolution setting decides how many pixels the sheet is drawn with, not how sharp your photos are. At 300 dpi the frames above need:
- 3.5 × 5 in (89 × 127 mm), 4-up (2 × 2): 526 × 750 px per frame
- 4 × 6 in (102 × 152 mm), 4-up (2 × 2): 602 × 898 px per frame
- 5 × 7 in (127 × 178 mm), 4-up (2 × 2): 750 × 1,051 px per frame
- A4 (210 × 297 mm), 4-up (2 × 2): 1,240 × 1,754 px per frame
- US Letter (215.9 × 279.4 mm), 4-up (2 × 2): 1,275 × 1,650 px per frame
A photo smaller than its frame's figure is being enlarged, and no setting here recovers detail that was never captured. The other presets, 150 and 350 dpi, trade file size against fineness: 150 is fine for a fridge door, 350 for glossy paper you will look at closely.
Notes
- More photos than frames simply spills onto more sheets. JPEG output arrives as a zip of sheets, PDF output as one file with a page per sheet
- Cut guides are hairlines at the frame edges. Leave them on unless you are printing borderless, where the printer will crop them off anyway
- HEIC photos straight from an iPhone cannot be decoded by most browsers. Convert them to JPEG first
- Going the other way — one image enlarged across several sheets — the poster tiler is the tool for that
- If you want the sheets as one document rather than a zip, choose PDF here, or combine them afterwards with the merge and split tool
- Photos are read, laid out and encoded in your browser and are never uploaded
Where these figures come from
The rules and figures this page relies on come from the sources below (links checked 25 September 2026).
- ISO 216:2007, Writing paper and certain classes of printed matter — Trimmed sizes — A and B series — International Organization for Standardization
- ASME Y14.1, Drawing Sheet Size and Format — The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
What can change: A4 and Letter are fixed by the standards below. The consumer print sizes — 3.5 by 5, 4 by 6 and 5 by 7 inches — are trade conventions rather than a published standard, so a lab may trim a millimetre either way.
Frequently asked questions
- Is there a 4 by 6 inch option?
- No. The sheet sizes are 3.5 by 5 in (89 by 127 mm), 5 by 7 in (127 by 178 mm) and A4 (210 by 297 mm). The first two are exact inch sizes despite the metric figures, but 4 by 6 in is 102 by 152 mm and is not one of them. To get 4 by 6 prints, choose A4, put two frames on the sheet and trim to size, or print 5 by 7 and crop after.
- Will the photos come out at exactly the size I chose?
- Only if you print at 100%, sometimes labelled Actual size, on the paper you selected. Fit to page, Shrink to fit and Borderless all rescale the sheet, and every frame on it, by a few per cent. The most common way to lose the exact size is sending A4 output to US Letter, which most drivers shrink by about 6%.
- How many photos can I put on one sheet?
- Two, four, six or nine, and you can add more photos than that. Anything past the frames on one sheet starts a second sheet, so twelve photos in a 4-up layout become three sheets. JPEG output gives you a zip of sheets and PDF output gives you one file with a page per sheet.
- Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
- No. The layout is measured, drawn to a canvas and encoded inside your browser. The photos never leave the device, which is the difference between this and a print shop's web uploader.
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