I Tested Google's New AI Image Editor (Nano Banana) - Here's What Actually Works

Okay, so everyone's been talking about Nano Banana, which is a new image editor, image creator tool that Google released a couple of weeks ago. It is super hyped and I've been meaning to check it out. So I had a little fun this weekend playing around. Let me show you what I did. Okay, so first, quickly, let me show you how you can access this if you want to do it for yourself. But go to gemini.google.comapp and then you'll see a little box down here and you're going to want to click Tools and then click Create Images. And that's how we're now in Nano Banana. So, okay, let me show you some fun stuff I did. Of course, I had to do house projects. This is a strip of dirt along a fence on the side of my house that has been driving me nuts. And I really want to plant something here. So I uploaded this photo and. And I said, this is an empty patch of dirt. I want to add landscaping. I want to add grasses and maroon alliums. Can't say that word. Can you show me what that would look like? And this is what it came back with, which I thought was really good and got me really excited to go planting. Okay, next up, I had a bit of a fail. So everyone's been using Nano Banana to generate really great LinkedIn profile photos of them. So I tried it. I took a photo. This is me in a phone booth and we work. And I said, turn this into a professional headshot, use studio lighting, blah, blah, blah. And it did it, but I just didn't like it. This, to me, felt really AI generated. I don't know if you can tell, but I can tell something about the teeth. And I kept going and I kept trying, and it just wasn't getting any better. And then this is a photo of. Of me and my husband from a party on vacation last summer. And I thought, okay, I liked how my hair looked in this photo. So I was like, maybe I can turn that into a profile pic. So it did do a good job of removing my husband. And then it added studio lighting, et cetera, and took out the background. But here I was feeling like we were already getting a little uncanny. Uncanny valley. Then I was like, I wonder if it can make my nose smaller. And this went down a weird rabbit hole that honestly didn't do what I wanted it to do. So that was kind of a failed. The next thing I tried was getting it to recreate images of my naughty dog, Cali. So backstory here is we have a really naughty golden doodle who's always stealing food. Of course, we're never fast enough to get photos of her stealing food. So I thought it'd be fun to see if I could get, like, a video montage of her doing that. So I uploaded a few images of Cali and gave it a prompt.

Love stealing human food. Can you generate three new images of her where she's stealing a different food item? What was this full prompt from a kitchen counter or a picnic? So it came back with this, which I thought was pretty good. That mostly looks like galley and is in fact what I asked for. Next up was Callie stealing a whole plate of cake from a picnic. I mean, not that realistic, obviously. Callie would just take the cake, but it was cute. And then here, Callie stole a sausage over the weekend. So I asked it to show me Cali stealing his sausage, which it did. These are, you know, they're not super realistic, but they're pretty fun. And I think I might make, like, a little video montage of these at some point. So I was, like, pretty impressed with those and mostly was just having a ton of fun seeing Cali eat all sorts of different food.

Back to the landscaping for a second. We ended up going to a nursery this weekend and picking up some grasses. And I fell in love with this really, like, cotton candy pink grass that is called pink moly grass. And I wanted to see if that would look good on this strip. So I said, you add some of that into this landscaping. And I am loving this. So I think we're going to go forward with this project because I've prototyped it. Here was another little exploration with the fence this weekend and nano banana. So here's the same fence and I had this idea of adding black spider webs across the fence and sparkly lights for Halloween. So I wanted to see how that would look. So I told it to do that. And I don't love, like, I don't think it did a great job. Here I was hoping to see black spider web across the entire fence and a lot more of it and have the lights look a lot better. So I said much more black spider web cover the fence. And it still didn't get, like, all the way down here. And again, this is an ugly looking. I don't know what this is more like draping than spiderweb. So this I'd say was, like, not a great outcome, but it did get me excited to actually do this project and make it look better. So there's that. Okay, next up, I had this project that I wanted to do or I needed ideas and inspiration for. This is a wall in my bedroom. And there's now furniture in this room. But this wall is still pretty boring. We have, like, a little bit of art up there, but I wanted to do shelves, like, maybe across the whole wa. And so I tried this prompt, and it actually failed. So I said I needed tasteful shelves. I want them to be symmetrical, blah, blah. They need to look sophisticated. I like McGee and company, so maybe something like they would design. And it gave me this, which sucked and is not at all what I was looking for. So I actually ended up flipping into ChatGPT for this one. And. And ChatGPT did way better than the Nano Banana. I cannot tell you why, and I don't have any logic for when to use either, but let me just show you. So first I said, can you find me images online of walls with a similar shape that have floating shelves? I need inspiration. So it came back with a few. Like, I actually liked this one that it shared. As you know, it's not the exact wall that I have here, but I just liked the look of this. I was like, okay, we can run with this.

It gave me, like, a whole bunch of stuff. And then what did I say? Oh, it looks like it even already put that into my wall. And I was actually really impressed with this photo on the left because it pretty much kept the shape of the wall and where the windows were, which was awesome. Um, didn't love the, like, how many shelves it put here, the wood, but was pretty happy with this. Then I said, I like this reference image. Show me this on my wall. Came back with two options. The one on the left is not my wall at all. Um, this one is not exactly my wall, but this, I was really into this. I was like, okay, cool. Like, I could see this coming together. This is like, kind of actually what I had in my head. I'm liking the lighting that it puts up here. This I felt was in the close enough in the right direction that I could show it to my husband and get, like, his first thoughts on that. And then I kept going because I just wanted to see if I could get it, like, a little more realistic. So kept prompting it. These are not that much more realistic. I also wanted to see what the shelves would look like in wood, but I. I did not want full wood. I literally just wanted the shelves and in wood. And I didn't get there here, but I did get there somewhere else. I think I went back to Nano Banana for this. Let me try, let me see.

Nope, that's a different project. Aha.

Oh yeah. Okay. So I took the image from ChatGPT and I went back into Gemini Nano Banana and I said, can you show me this wall with the shelves in a mid brown oak wood? Just the shelves and shelves, not the wall or anything else. And it did it. So there you go. Combo of two AI tools again. There is like no logic or rules for this. It's just trial and error to see which one is going to get me the closest result I want. And then I wanted to try it in like a darker brown wood, which it did a great job of doing as well. So honestly, like, this is kind of what I was hoping as an outcome for this project. I just wanted to see what this wall was going to look like with shelving. I loved that it gave me the shelves with some, you know, images and plans, which is what I want. And the lighting was a really awesome addition. So I think we are going to move forward with this project.

Here's an example of something that didn't work in Gemini Nano Banana image creation. The this is a wall in my bedroom. Um, it's all taped up. These photos are from before we moved in and we've got a couple cabinets here. We need more closet space, especially for like dresses and long hanging stuff. So we want to do some full size built ins along this very weirdly sloped wall. And so my husband and I have been trying to kind of scope out this project and I thought that maybe Nano Banana could help me. So I found a photo online that was inspiration that I liked, which was this. And now this is certainly not the same size as my wall, but same shape. And so I said, see these built in cabinets? Can you add these to this wall in my bedroom so I can see what it might look like if we did floor to ceiling built ins along the wall that currently has cabinets. We need to be cognizant of the slant of the ceiling heading towards the right. So I mean, I guess it did what I asked it to. It literally took that image and put it in this wall. I mean, honestly, this looks amazing. Unfortunately, these are not the dimensions of my room. My room has a much smaller, like tall area to work with. So like, looks good. Not my style, but you know, love the way it looks. Maybe like, helps me sort of understand how this could look. But this was kind of a fail because we can't really use these images. And I, I was like, can you make this more accurate to the dimensions of the wall. Way too lazy to go measure this right now to help it do that. Thought maybe it could get there on its own. It could not. It instead gave me this weird image with those new cabinets and the old cabinets on the left, and I just aborted this entire attempt.