Should you Nano Banana?

Benjamin Brewster

Google launched a new AI image editor inside Gemini last week.

The official name is Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, but everyone’s calling it "Nano Banana" because that was Google’s internal code name for it.

Nano Banana is getting a lot of attention because it’s:

✅ Swap backgrounds → Put your product on a beach instead of your messy desk
✅ Add or remove objects → Drop a coffee cup into a lifestyle shot
✅ Change poses → Adjust your headshot to look more confident
✅ Apply styles → Turn a regular photo into watercolor or marble texture
✅ Fix problems → Remove watermarks, fix exposure, clean up clutter

I spent about an hour testing it out for this issue:

❌ Testimonial graphics: Asked it to create an image with customer quotes. The text came out garbled. ChatGPT actually handles text-in-images better. Neither is perfect. Making something using a template in Canva would probably look better and be less frustrating to get the way I wanted it.

✅ Custom icons: I use stick-figure style graphics for my Unscaled Solopreneur newsletter. I bought an icon pack of a hundred or so figures in that style, but sometimes I need something specific that doesn't exist. Nano Banana got it —right color, right style, exactly what I wanted on the first try.

❌ Banner images: Tried creating this newsletter's header image in Nano Banana. It took a few tries to get a prompt that got a result I kind of like, but I would spend more time using Nano Banana for this than my usual tool (Krea).

❌ Headshot editor: I uploaded a recent passport photo of myself and asked Gemini to make a business casual headshot. The first result mostly looked like me, though I think it made my forehead bigger than it is in real life, and it made an interesting style choice with a tie under the shirt. The other results I got are too embarrassing to share.

This is exactly why you need to actually test these tools instead of just reading about them.

Everyone's raving about Nano Banana.

For me?

It solved one specific problem (custom icons) and failed at three others.

That's not a knock on the tool.

Every AI tool has strengths and drawbacks.

The only way to know if it'll help you is to spend 30-40 minutes actually using it.

Try it for the stuff you struggle with.

See if it does something better than your current tools.

Then decide:

"This changes everything for me" → go all in
"This saves me time on specific tasks" → use it for those, ignore the rest
"This is cool but doesn't help me" → move on

Don't get caught up in the hype.

Get caught up in what actually works for your business.

→ Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image): Use Cases and Creative Possibilities

→ Introducing Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, our state-of-the-art image model

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Thanks for reading!

Nathan Rodgers

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