(Credit: Zain bin Awais/PCMag Composite; shoaib majeed/Tatiana Pogorelova/via Getty Images)
Although image editing tools in AI chatbots haven't been great historically, Gemini's new Nano Banana model is a massive step in the right direction. It doesn't always produce perfect results and has some significant limitations, but, in my experience, Nano Banana does a better job at AI image editing than any other chatbot I've tried. You can use Nano Banana for free with any Gemini account, so I encourage you to give it a shot yourself, but here are five basic tricks to get you started.
What Is Nano Banana, and How Can You Try It?
But first, let's clarify a few things. Nano Banana is specifically Gemini's image editing model. The difference between image editing and image generation isn't always significant, but, in general, Nano Banana is for making alterations to images you provide rather than generating entirely new ones based on prompts.
You can use Nano Banana in Gemini's traditional interface, either on desktop or mobile. Simply sign in to your account, upload a file, write your prompt, and toggle Nano Banana in the central text field. The toggle is easy to find; just look for a banana emoji.
As a warning, you can download edited images only at around 720p, which isn't a particularly high resolution. Furthermore, across all my edits, I noticed the addition of a slightly blurry layer that disrupts the plane of focus, reduces sharpness, and smudges text. I hope Google addresses these issues in the future because they make Gemini a nonstarter for serious photographers. Gemini's results are still fine for casually sharing with family and friends, however.
1. Remove Unwanted Elements
It's a simple task to ask Gemini to remove anything you don't want in your image. This could be a pesky finger or hand in the frame, or really anything else. In the example below, I simply asked Gemini to "remove the hand in the image," but other phrasings should work just as well. As you can see, Gemini had no trouble removing the hand, but it's particularly impressive how well the content it generated to fill the leftover space matches that of the original image.
This capability tends to work best for smaller alterations. You can certainly ask Gemini to remove all the furniture and various objects in a room, but you run the risk of the result looking like it was an AI-generated image rather than a real photo with some changes.
2. Add New Content
You can also ask Gemini to add things to your image. You might want to turn a sandy lot into a beautiful grassy yard, for instance, as I did in the example below. I merely asked Gemini to "add grass to the lot," but you can use more natural language to get the same result. Gemini's grass looks reasonably believable, which is impressive since AI image editing often focuses on removing things and filling leftover space.
Like with removing things from images, you're better off adding things judiciously. Think along the lines of adding a nice tree in the background of a natural scene. Using AI to generate too many things in an image can make it look fake rather than just edited.
3. Create Custom Filters
Image filters are nothing new, and many different apps can add them to your photos. However, if you are after a specific look that premade filters can't easily accommodate, you can easily waste significant time trying to find the perfect one or even fail to find one you like.
Luckily, you can ask Gemini to create and apply any type of filter imaginable to an image. For example, I uploaded a picture of a tree and asked Gemini to "add a filter that makes it look like it was shot in the 1990s on a Polaroid." Feel free to be as creative as you want in your description. I particularly like how specific filters can be; for instance, you can create one that makes an image look like a shot from a movie of your choice.
4. Visualize Things Quickly
Have you ever wondered what it might look like if you moved your coffee table from one side of the room to the other, or if you added some art to a particular wall? If you answered yes, Gemini can be a useful visualization tool.
Simply take a photo of the space you're thinking about changing, upload it to Gemini, and ask to see the changes you imagine. In my example above, I uploaded an image of a room and asked Gemini to "remove the bookcase." That's just a basic example, of course. Since Gemini's image editing rarely features major errors or distortion, it's often an effective way to visualize whatever you're having trouble imagining yourself.
5. Get Rid of Distracting Reflections
Oftentimes, the last thing on your mind when you snap a quick photo is to check whether there are reflections in the frame, especially if a scene is chaotic. But that doesn't make them any less distracting after the fact.
The good news is that you can ask Gemini to remove a particular reflection. For example, I uploaded a picture of my computer and asked Gemini to "remove the reflection of my hand on the glass case." Specifying what reflection you want to remove is helpful since Gemini isn't great at removing reflections in general. That said, it's relatively effective for dealing with particularly troublesome ones.
Is Gemini Better Than Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop?
Before anybody starts typing up an angry comment, Gemini likely won't ever replace Adobe's industry-standard photo manipulation and workflow apps. In testing, however, Gemini does perform better than Lightroom and Photoshop in relation to the quality of its generative AI content.
Take the earlier example in which I asked Gemini to remove the bookcase. I asked a colleague to use Lightroom and Photoshop to remove the same bookcase using their respective AI tools. The results are below:
Frankly, they aren't close in quality. Both Lightroom and Photoshop struggled significantly, while Gemini's image (first slide), at a glance, looks great. In my example above, Lightroom (second slide) generated a wall that doesn't quite match the other ones, while Photoshop's wall (third slide) shows distortion. And, to reiterate, Nano Banana is a free feature of Gemini, not part of the world's most famous duo of photo editing software.
As such, it's tough to ignore Gemini if you're just looking to make a quick change to an image before you send it to a friend or post it on social media. Although Adobe's generative AI functionality is worse than Gemini's in this example, that's just one aspect of the Adobe apps' impressive feature sets. You won't find pro-minded tools for correcting color, distortion, lighting, and noise in Gemini, for example, nor can you use it to edit raw files. You also obviously don't get the advanced photo library and layer features in Lightroom and Photoshop, respectively. It's also worth noting that you can't directly tweak edits in Gemini, like you can in Adobe software; rather, you have to send in additional prompts.
However, learning how to use those apps effectively can take significant skill and time. Meanwhile, anybody can use Gemini to edit images in seconds.
There's No Wrong Way to Edit Images With Gemini
Gemini's Nano Banana image editor is, ultimately, just an easy and free way to manipulate images, in much the same way Gemini's Veo 3 model works for videos. So, don't feel like you can't play around and give Gemini some sillier prompts to see what it can do. If you're looking to make serious edits to high-resolution photos, though, I still recommend dedicated software.
