The short version: Gemini's photo editing tool (the one people call Nano Banana inside the Gemini app) can turn an ordinary phone selfie into a soft, editorial, or film-style aesthetic edit in under 20 seconds, and the 40 prompts below are written to be copied straight into the app with no editing needed. The bit nobody tells you is what happens to the photo after you upload it, so I've covered that too.
What Gemini does to a photo
Gemini's image tool doesn't just add a filter on top. It rebuilds the photo based on your instruction, keeping your face and pose roughly the same while changing lighting, colour grading, clothing texture, background, and sometimes hair or makeup. This is why the results look far more like a real photoshoot than an Instagram filter ever did. It's also why the results can go wrong in a way filters never did: warped fingers, a earring that's suddenly on the wrong ear, teeth that look slightly too even.
To use it, you open the Gemini app (free on Android and iOS, also on the web at gemini.google.com), tap the image icon, upload a clear photo of the face or scene you want edited, then paste one of the prompts below. Gemini gives it a go, shows you the result, and you can ask it to tweak specific things in the same chat, like "make the lighting warmer" or "remove the necklace."
How to get results worth keeping
- Start with a photo that's well lit and in focus. Blurry input photos give you blurry, mushy faces on the output no matter how good the prompt is.
- Use one clear instruction per edit rather than five ideas crammed into one sentence. Gemini follows short, specific prompts far better than long paragraphs.
- Ask for one small change at a time in the same conversation rather than starting over. It remembers the context.
- Download every version you like straight away. Gemini doesn't keep a gallery for you the way some apps do.
- Expect the free tier to cap you at a limited number of image generations a day before it nudges you toward Google One AI Premium, which sits around £18.99 a month in the UK. If you're editing 40 photos in one sitting, you may need to spread it over two or three days on the free plan.
40 copy and paste Gemini prompts
Clean girl everyday aesthetic
- Give this photo a clean, glowy, minimal aesthetic with soft natural light and no visible makeup texture.
- Make this look like a candid morning photo with soft window light and a slicked-back bun.
- Add a warm beige and cream colour grade with soft skin and natural highlights.
- Turn the background into a plain, softly lit neutral wall with a slight blur.
- Add a gentle dewy skin finish and soft diffused lighting like an early morning selfie.
Vintage film and disposable camera
- Edit this photo to look like it was shot on a disposable film camera with slight grain and a flash-lit look.
- Give this a 1990s film photo aesthetic with warm colour shift and soft blur at the edges.
- Add visible film grain, a slight red date stamp in the corner, and washed-out colours.
- Make this look like a scanned photo print with faded edges and a slightly overexposed flash.
- Add a nostalgic Kodak film colour grade with muted greens and warm skin tones.
Golden hour outdoor
- Change the lighting to golden hour with warm orange light coming from behind.
- Add a sunset background with soft lens flare and warm light on the skin.
- Make it look like this photo was taken outdoors at sunset with long soft shadows.
- Add warm backlighting and a slightly hazy, dreamy outdoor background.
- Give this a golden field background with wind-blown hair and warm afternoon light.
Cosy academia and study aesthetic
- Change the background to a cosy library with warm lamp light and stacked books.
- Add a knitted cardigan, a cup of tea, and soft warm indoor lighting.
- Make this look like a study desk photo with fairy lights and open notebooks in the background.
- Add a rainy window in the background with warm interior lighting.
- Give this a muted brown and cream colour palette with soft, cosy lighting.
Editorial fashion magazine style
- Edit this into a high fashion magazine cover style photo with dramatic studio lighting.
- Add a bold, high contrast black and white editorial look with sharp shadows.
- Make this look like it was shot for a fashion magazine with a plain coloured backdrop and strong side lighting.
- Add a glossy, polished studio finish with sharp focus and clean background.
- Give this a high fashion pose feel with dramatic lighting from one side only.
Soft fantasy and fairy tale
- Add soft floating flower petals in the air and a hazy pastel background.
- Give this a fairy tale forest background with soft dappled light coming through trees.
- Add a subtle glowing light around the edges of the photo, like early morning mist.
- Change the background to a soft pastel sky with a dreamy, painted look.
- Add delicate flower details near the hair and a soft romantic colour grade.
Y2K nostalgic
- Give this a Y2K aesthetic with butterfly clips, glossy lips, and a slight digital camera flash.
- Add a low resolution early 2000s digital camera look with a timestamp in the corner.
- Change the colour grade to bright, slightly oversaturated colours like an old digicam photo.
- Add chunky highlights, a shiny lip gloss finish, and a slight flash glare.
- Give this a 2000s mall photo booth aesthetic with bold background colours.
Minimalist studio portrait
- Change the background to a plain grey studio backdrop with soft, even lighting.
- Give this a clean, minimal black and white portrait finish.
- Add a simple beige studio background with a single soft light source from the front.
- Make this look like a professional headshot with neutral, even lighting and sharp focus.
- Add a plain cream backdrop and remove any background clutter completely.
A worked example: building a consistent feed without a photographer
Say you run a small handmade jewellery shop on Etsy aimed at teenage girls and their mums, and your feed currently has one decent product photo and a lot of dark, blurry phone shots of you wearing your own pieces. You don't have £300 a month for a photographer, but your competitors' feeds all look consistent, warm, and styled.
Here's how that would work with the prompts above. You take five clear photos of yourself wearing the jewellery against a plain wall, in good daylight, no filter. You run each one through three of the prompts above (say, the clean girl aesthetic prompt, the golden hour prompt, and the minimalist studio prompt), giving you 15 variations from five source photos. You pick the best of each, download them, and you've got a two-week content calendar with a consistent, editorial-feeling aesthetic without booking a single shoot. The whole batch would take roughly 45 minutes including the picking and downloading, not the hours a real photoshoot and edit would take.
The thing to watch is consistency of face and hands across the batch. Gemini sometimes shifts small features slightly between edits, so if you're building a brand where people recognise you specifically (rather than just the products), do a quick side by side check before you post, not after.
The bit most posts about this skip
Every photo you upload to Gemini goes to Google's servers, and Google's own terms state that content you submit can be used to improve their products unless you've specifically turned that off in your Gemini app activity settings. For a lot of aesthetic edits, that's a non-issue. But if you're a parent letting a younger teen use this, or you're uploading photos that include other people who haven't agreed to it, that's worth a two-minute conversation before the fortieth edit, not after. Turning off Gemini Apps Activity in your Google account settings stops most of this, and it's worth doing before you start rather than after you've uploaded fifty photos.
The other thing worth saying plainly: an aesthetic Gemini edit is a nice photo, not a personality, and not a replacement for actual photos of actual moments. If every single post on a feed is an AI edit, people notice, and it starts to read as slightly hollow even when each individual image looks lovely. Mixing three or four real, unedited photos into every ten posts keeps a feed feeling like a person rather than a filter.
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Related guides live in the ChatGPT Prompts and Limits: 30 Guides to Fun Prompts, Photo Edits and Daily Caps. To write your own, try the free tool that writes the prompt for you.
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemini free to use for photo edits?
Yes, the Gemini app is free to download and use for image editing, but the free tier caps how many image generations you get per day, and heavy use pushes you toward Google One AI Premium at around £18.99 a month in the UK.
Do these prompts work on any photo, or just selfies?
They work best on clear, well-lit photos where the face or subject is in focus; group photos, dark rooms, and blurry originals tend to produce warped or muddled results regardless of the prompt.
Can I ask Gemini to change specific details after the first edit?
Yes, and this is the most useful trick: stay in the same conversation and ask for small tweaks like "make the lighting cooler" or "remove the necklace" rather than starting a new prompt from scratch each time.
Is it safe for a teenager to upload their photo to Gemini?
It's reasonably safe for casual aesthetic edits, but photos are processed on Google's servers and can be used to improve their products unless Gemini Apps Activity is switched off in account settings, which is worth doing before uploading personal photos.
