Unless you’re a seasoned editor, editing photos to get a specific result can be tough. Any capable editing tool will give you dozens of tools and sliders to play around with, and not everyone knows what they do.
That’s where AI is stepping in. I decided to edit my selfies with my Pixel’s AI, and they turned out great. Editing with Gemini, however, can put Photoshop to shame.
The Photoshop problem
Photoshop is an incredible piece of software. It features a range of professional-grade tools, including some powered by AI, to help editors of all skill levels achieve professional results seamlessly. In case you’re stuck with something, there’s also a vast resource of tutorials and guides on the internet to make life easy.
That said, it still takes a certain degree of skill to be able to use Photoshop properly. On top of that, you need a computer powerful enough to run the program and pay a subscription to Adobe. This means there’s a significant financial investment you need to make before you even open your first photo in Photoshop.
As great as that level of control is, you don’t need it unless you’re a professional photographer. And even if you are, there are free Photoshop alternatives you should try that can get the job done. For a vast majority of pictures you’ll take, you just don’t need the level of control and complexity that Photoshop brings. The learning curve can also be rather steep, meaning you’ll spend more time learning and breaking things before you start getting the desired results.
By contrast, AI editing tools like Gemini can speed up the process and make it significantly easier. Instead of playing with hundreds of sliders and tools, you can simply type or speak out your changes, and Gemini can handle the editing for you. These editing capabilities are available to both free and paid users of the platform, so you can also save a ton on subscription costs. It’s one of the best Google Gemini features you must try.
You also don’t need a powerful computer to get Gemini to edit your photos. While Photoshop does have a mobile app, it’s also tied to Adobe’s subscription and can be quite complex to use. On the other hand, whether you’re at your PC or using your phone, all Gemini requires to edit your photos is for you to describe the changes.
Gemini makes photo editing a breeze
Gemini’s 2.5 Flash, also called Nano Banana, is the model for editing images. To start using it, head to the Gemini website on your desktop or open the Gemini app and select the Create images mode. Once the mode is chosen, click the “+” icon to upload your image and type out the edits you need.
And that’s pretty much everything you need to do to start editing images in Gemini—no subscriptions or powerful computers needed. From this point onwards, you talk to Gemini about the edits you want.
At the time of writing, Gemini excels particularly at:
- Object removal and addition
- Background replacement
- Style transfer between images
- Color and lighting adjustments
- Blending multiple photos
The AI ensures it gets your changes done as quickly as possible. It’s also rather good at retaining consistency when it comes to faces or foreground objects, changing only what requires editing.
Conversational editing
One of the best parts about editing images with Gemini is its ability to carry out multi-turn editing. This means you can build upon previous edits conversationally. You don’t have to specify all your edits in one prompt. For example, you can ask Gemini to change the sky in an image in the first prompt, and make changes to lighting or add or remove background elements in the next.
Being able to describe your edits also changes your relationship with editing. Instead of being limited by the tools and your skill level, you can be a lot more creative and bring your vision to life. Since edits happen much faster and require less effort, you’ll also end up experimenting with more ideas. This puts your creative vision in the driver’s seat instead of your technical skill.
If typing out prompts isn’t your thing, you can always just switch to voice mode and start speaking to Gemini about the edits you want to make. However, in my experience, the voice mode doesn’t work nearly as well, mostly because I kept getting non-descriptive errors saying something went wrong. I’m not sure what causes this in voice mode, but typing out the prompts works every single time.
Complicated edits happen much faster
When you’re editing in Photoshop, it’s very easy to spend hours trying to do a simple background swap. With Gemini, your edits are done in seconds.
In Photoshop, it can take a seasoned professional several minutes of careful layer work or masking to remove an object, change a background, or move elements between images. In my testing, Gemini achieved the same results in under 30 seconds. It can seamlessly remove watermarks, swap backgrounds, and add or remove elements from photos almost as quickly as I can describe the change.
For example, take a look at this photo of a crashed bike I took. My friend was in the hospital and wanted a photo of his crashed bike. Instead of sending the dinged-up vehicle that I was transporting to the repair shop, I took a photo of the bike and asked Gemini to make it look like it’s parked in the hills.
As you can see, Gemini not only got the bike (and even the helmet) right, but also accounted for the shadows, lighting, and even the dust on the fenders. A similar edit would’ve taken ages in Photoshop, not to mention the fact that I would need to be at my desk for the edit.
Gemini fixes consistency issues
One of the biggest irks I had about AI-based editing was the fact that most AI tools ended up changing faces or the image subject. When editing images of yourself or people you know well, subtle flaws can make all the difference. An AI-edited image that’s close to how you look but not quite the same just doesn’t work.
Google has set up Gemini to make photos of yourself, friends, family, and even pets look consistently like themselves. So, regardless of the edits you’re making, chances are the person’s likeness in the image remains the same.
This works especially well when you’re trying to blend two or more images to create a result where the people in the two images are combined in one frame. Everyone looks like they should, except with the edits you specified, not the ones the AI model thought it should add.
While Photoshop will likely remain the tool of choice for professional graphics designers and photographers, especially with Adobe’s suite of AI-powered features, Gemini is an excellent alternative. For anyone who doesn’t want to deal with an overwhelming amount of controls and technical tools, it offers a quick, easy, and accessible way to edit your photos just the way you like them.
