I’m testing the Google Gemini 2.5 “Nano Banana” artificial intelligence engine in Photoshop’s latest beta release, with unreal results. Its focus on editing images over conjuring them is more useful professionally and ethically, offering repeatable output while retaining facial detail. Seeing old newsprint photos leap off the page in sharp color can bring a tear to your eye.
A.I. creations don’t belong in portfolios because we can’t take much credit. Though these source images were mine, I’m just typing specific instructions to modify them. Results are like a slot machine eating credits with hopes for each new variation generated. Most were complete in one pass with minimal spot edits. Some of the originals live on my photography page if wanting before/after comparisons. These are extreme examples, yet subtlety is also possible.
We’ll start with a few old family photo retouches, followed by artistic treatments, the main attraction here. Applying combinations of filters intelligently follows the actual strokes and geometry of a scene, so lighting and shadows match. I then placed myself in the most visually iconic cartoons/comics (bottom of Page 1), which it obeyed when prompted to render environments in those styles. Slight differences are likely attributable to slop/hallucinations or trademark avoidance.
