Back up years of piled-up artwork

The pile is real

Ask most families about their child's artwork and the answer is a physical location: a box under the bed, a drawer at the back of the closet, a stack on the desk that has quietly grown for years. Every drawing in that pile is a page of the child's history. The question is how to get them all into Little Binder without spending a whole summer one photo at a time.

That is exactly what the Add many at once feature is for. It is a grown-up tool on the Create tab, built for batch digitizing: pick a whole group of photos at once, answer a few questions about the group, and save them all.

Step by step

1. Open Add many at once

On Create, open More ways to create, then Add many at once. Use your PIN or phone passcode before opening the device library.

2. Photograph the pile, or pick photos you already have

After the grown-up check, the device library opens. If your browser needs another tap, use Choose creations. Select up to 30 creation images. JPEG, PNG, WebP, HEIC and AVIF are supported, up to 64 MB each. High-resolution JPEG, HEIC and AVIF images can be up to 210 megapixels; PNG and WebP images can be up to 40 megapixels. This includes HDR and Motion Photos, shown as still images. Separate videos, animated images, SVGs and documents are not accepted.

3. Let Little Binder check for copies

Before anything is saved, Little Binder compares the images with what your family already has. A match is labeled Already saved or Selected twice and skipped by default. If this new picture is the one you want, tap Edit under its preview, then Save another copy to include it.

4. Choose children and spaces

Choose the children who made these creations and any spaces for the group.

• Select one or more children under Whose creations are these? All selected children are credited on each creation. For separate works by different children, import them in separate groups.
• Spaces for all creations includes built-in and family-created spaces. Select any that fit. To give one creation different spaces, tap Edit under its preview and choose spaces in that creation's panel. Changes to the group selection leave individual choices in place. To save one multipart creation, give all its parts the same spaces.

Under a preview, tap Edit, then Remove in that creation's panel to leave it out. Start over opens the device library to choose a different group. Canceling keeps your current selection.

5. Save the batch

For pages or views of the same project, choose Save as one multipart creation. The selected images become ordered parts of one draft, and the multipart editor opens. You can reorder or edit parts and add optional voice notes. The first part becomes the gallery cover. To keep separate projects, use Save creations instead.

6. Watch the pile become a collection

For one multipart creation, continue through the editor to choose a space, add an optional title and save. If importing stops, saved parts remain in the draft. Use Continue saving parts to retry the rest, or Edit the saved parts to continue with those already saved. After leaving the import screen, you may need to select the unsaved images again. After separate creations save, choose approved people beside each creation to share it, or choose See them in the gallery without sharing.

Sorting after the import

Batch import is deliberately about getting everything in fast, so it leaves the finer sorting for later:

• Name them. Open a creation's details and add a name: "Rocket Ship," "Mom with the cat hat," "The house with the red door." Names make the gallery far easier to search and far more fun to browse.
• Move them into spaces. A grown-up can move existing creations into spaces from the creation's details. A "Masterpieces" space for the proudest pieces, an "Art Class" space for school projects, a "Dinosaurs" space for everything with scales.
• Change the type. If a painting was imported as a drawing, the type can be corrected per creation in the gallery.

Sorting does not have to happen the same day. The backlog was years in the making, and it can be organized on its own pace, a space at a time.