Immich Book

Create beautiful photo books from your Immich albums.

A web application that generates print-ready photo books from your Immich albums using the official Immich SDK. This is a self-hosted, private fork - it connects to a single Immich server through a server-side proxy (no manual connection screen, no public hosted instance).

Features

Connection & Browsing

• Connects to Immich through a server-side proxy (nginx injects the API key; see nginx.conf.template) - no credentials ever reach the browser
• Browse and select from all your albums

Layout & Customization

• Three composition styles per page - Bento (varied-size tiles matched to each photo's aspect ratio), Columns (Pinterest-style masonry), Collage (denser Bento variant) - assigned automatically, overridable per page
• Draggable bento split boundaries with magnetic snap, per-split axis flip, resizable photo frames
• Force how many photos land on a given page
• Page dimensions in millimeters, with A4/Square format presets, or fully custom
• Per-printer profiles (see below) with their own trim sizes, bleed, and page-count constraints
• Per-album configuration with global fallback
• Full undo/redo history of edits

Photo Presentation

• Polaroid, scrapbook and clean (edge-to-edge) card styles
• Drag & drop to reorder photos, or set a placed photo aside to pull it back into the unplaced list without losing your layout
• Optional date badge per photo
• Optional user-written caption per photo (only cards with a caption use the extra space), and an editable per-page caption band
• Textured or flat page backgrounds, with the background's hex code shown for matching a cover/spine color
• Front/back cover with photo+title, full-bleed, or text-only layouts, and an optional separated cover for printers that need one

Preview & Export

• Live preview, automatically scaled to fit the window, with a page thumbnail navigation rail (cover/back-cover anchors pinned, scrollable interior pages)
• Printer-accurate bleed ("fond perdu"): bled photos extend past the trim edge so print-shop cutting tolerance never reveals a background sliver
• High-quality PDF export using @react-pdf/renderer

Getting Started

You will need:

• An Immich server with API access
• An Immich API key with the following permissions:
  • album.read - To browse and list albums
  • asset.read - To read asset metadata (descriptions, dates, etc.)
  • asset.view - To access photo thumbnails, used for both the web preview and PDF export

Creating an API Key

1. Log into your Immich instance
2. Go to Account Settings → API Keys
3. Click New API Key
4. Give it a descriptive name (e.g., "Immich Book")
5. Select the required permissions:
   • album.read
   • asset.read
   • asset.view
6. Click Create
7. Copy the API key (you won't be able to see it again!)

Deployment

This app is meant to be deployed with Docker, behind a reverse proxy that reaches your Immich server on the same internal network.

Read INTEGRATION.md first - this app has no authentication of its own and expects a trusted upstream reverse proxy to provide it. Deploying it without that layer means anyone who can reach it has full access to every stored photobook.

git clone <this-repository>
cd immich-book
cp .env.example .env

Fill in .env (see .env.example for what each variable does):

IMMICH_API_KEY=your-immich-api-key
IMMICH_SERVER_URL=https://your-immich-server.example.com
EXTERNAL_NETWORK=name-of-your-existing-docker-network

Then build and run:

docker compose build
docker compose up -d

nginx.conf.template proxies /api/ to immich_server:2283 (adjust the container name/port to match your Immich deployment) and injects IMMICH_API_KEY server-side. docker-compose.yml passes IMMICH_SERVER_URL through as the VITE_IMMICH_PROXY_TARGET build arg - the app auto-connects through the proxy on load, no manual entry.

Using Immich Book

1. Select an Album - browse your albums, click one to open it
2. Configure Page Layout - printer profile, page format/dimensions, spacing, dates, captions
3. Adjust individual pages - switch a page's style (Bento/Columns/Collage), drag split boundaries, force its photo count
4. Customize photos - drag & drop to reorder, add a per-photo caption, set a photo aside if you're not sure where it belongs yet
5. Generate PDF - click "Generate PDF" to preview, use the PDF viewer toolbar to download

Development

npm install

Create a .env file pointing at your Immich server (dev mode proxies /api through Vite):

# .env
VITE_IMMICH_PROXY_TARGET=https://your-immich-server.com

npm start           # Dev server at http://localhost:5173
npm run build       # Build for production (output in dist/)
npm run type-check  # Run TypeScript type checking

Acknowledgments

Originally based on ch1bo/immich-book, since substantially rewritten (layout engine, deployment model, captioning).

• Immich - the self-hosted photo management platform this depends on
• @react-pdf/renderer - PDF generation

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). See the LICENSE file for the full terms.