Gemini AI Photo Prompts

What a photo edit request needs

When you upload a selfie to Gemini and ask for a new look, the model has to decide two things: what to change and what to leave alone. It's good at the first. The second is where a restyle goes wrong, because anything you don't protect is fair game, and the face is the part you'll notice first. A request that works answers five questions up front.

1. Which picture. «Use the attached photo» as the first words. It tells Gemini this is an edit of your file, and it keeps the reply from being a description of the photo.
2. The hold list. Face, skin tone, hair, body, and anything else you care about: the outfit, the pose, the room. Say «exactly as they are».
3. One change, described like a photographer would. Light from which side, what time of day, which lens, what film stock or grade. «Make it cinematic» leaves the model to guess; «teal shadows, warm skin, lifted blacks» doesn't.
4. The frame. An aspect ratio such as 4:5 for a profile picture or 21:9 for a banner, or «keep the original crop».
5. A cleanup line at the end: no text, no watermark, no extra people. Restyles like to add a date stamp or a stranger in the background.

Put together, a request you can type from memory:

Use the attached photo. Keep my face, skin tone, hair and body
exactly as they are. Change only [the one thing]: [light, setting,
lens, color, described in plain words]. Aspect ratio [4:5].
No text, no watermark, no extra people.

Every prompt on this page is that pattern filled in for one look. The brackets are the only part you need to change.

Which prompt for which photo

Pick by what you want to change, then check the last column: a figurine needs your whole body in frame, and a color grade works on almost any shot.

For headshots aimed at LinkedIn or a company page, the headshot prompts go further than the background swap here.

The same request, written twice

Here's the request people usually type when they've seen a 90s-look photo online and want one of their own. We wrote it, and the better version below it, to show what the five questions change.

make this photo look 90s

Read it from the model's side. «90s» could mean the film, the fashion, the hair or the room, so any of them may change. There's no hold list, which leaves your face open to being redrawn. No frame is set, so the crop can move. And nothing stops a printed date in the corner, which a lot of «90s» pictures have.

Use the attached photo. Keep my face, skin tone, hair and clothes
exactly as they are. Change only the look of the picture: 35mm
color film from the early 1990s, soft warm grain, slightly faded
shadows, a direct on-camera flash with the background falling off
into a plain cream wall. Keep the original framing.
No date stamp, no text, no extra people.

Now «90s» means one thing, the film, and everything else is pinned. That's the whole idea behind the Retro 90s Film Portrait, which adds a few more film details on top. If you want the 90s fashion as well, that's a second change: ask for it in a second message, after the film look is right.

Follow-up lines that fix an edit

Stay in the same chat when the first result is close. A short reply fixes most problems faster than rewriting the prompt, and Gemini keeps the context of what you asked.

Where photo edits go wrong

A restyle is a new image drawn from your photo, and the places it slips are fairly predictable once you know where to look.

• Colored light changes your skin. Neon gels, sunset and candlelight all tint skin by design, and the model sometimes pushes past the tint into a different tone. The Cinematic Colour Grade says «keep skin natural» for this reason; add the same line to any lighting prompt.
• Small details get invented. Earrings, a logo on a T-shirt, writing on a sign behind you. Check them at full size before you post.
• Two faces drift more than one. For a couple shot, start from a photo with both of you in it, which is how the Anniversary Couple Portrait is written.
• Stacked edits wander. Each new change is drawn on top of the last result, so after four or five rounds the face has moved a little each time. When that happens, start again from your original upload with everything you've learned in one prompt.
• Restoration guesses. On a damaged print, Old Family Photo Repair rebuilds what the damage hid, and a rebuilt eye or hand is a guess. Keep the original scan alongside the repaired copy.

One more rule, ours: edit photos of yourself, or of adults who have said yes. Restyling someone else's face without asking is the fastest way to turn a fun edit into a problem.

What changes the result in Gemini

These details come from Google's Gemini help pages and are current as of October 2026; Google changes them often, so treat them as a snapshot.

• Age. Generating images needs you to be 13 or older (or your country's age), but editing an image you upload needs you to be 18 or older.
• The model behind your edit. With the Gemini model set to Flash or Pro, edits run on Nano Banana 2. Set to Flash-Lite, Gemini uses Nano Banana 2 Lite, which Google says isn't designed for multiple reference images or for multiple edits. If a series of edits on your photo starts falling apart, check the model menu first.
• Paid plans. With a Google AI plan you can open the three-dot menu under an image and choose Redo with Pro, which reruns it on Nano Banana Pro. Downloads come at 2K with a plan and 1K without one, which matters if you want to print. Once you've used your daily Nano Banana 2 images, Redo with Pro stops working too.
• An avatar in place of an upload. Gemini can record your face and voice once and let you type @ and your Google username in a prompt in place of attaching a photo. It's for adults only, English only for now, and not available in the EEA, Switzerland or the UK.
• Marks on the result. Every image Gemini creates or edits carries an invisible SynthID watermark and Content Credentials metadata. The visible watermark can be switched off in Settings under Media Watermark, except in India, South Korea and Vietnam, where only AI Ultra subscribers get that setting.

Plan prices and the rest of what Gemini does are in our Gemini review. If you want to make images from scratch, merge several photos or put text in a picture, the Nano Banana prompts cover the image model itself.