Someone Used Google's Nano Banana AI To Colorize Old Photos, And The Results Are Stunning

By Chris Smith
A Gemini logo on a laptop. Thaspol Sangsee/Shutterstock

Users have been testing Google's new image editing model "Nano Banana" — aka Gemini 2.5 Flash Image – for a few days, with some testers posting samples of images generated with the new AI model or photos edited with it. One of the most impressive uses of Gemini 2.5 Flash Image was discovered by X user Rodrigo Bressane. He uploaded black-and-white images, including a few iconic photographs, telling the AI to colorize them. As you're about to see in the examples below, the results are incredible, offering a great use case for Nano Banana. You could use the AI to make colorized versions of old family photos and bring them to life in ways the original photographers were never able to.

Google unveiled the Gemini 2.5 Flash Image generator last week, making it available in the Gemini app and other places where Google's latest AI models are available to users and developers. What's interesting about the release is that Google confirmed Gemini 2.5 Flash Image is the Nano Banana AI image generation model that went viral in the weeks leading up to the announcement. Google released the AI model for public testing ahead of the official rollout, using the "nano-banana" name on LMArena. Users who found it compared it to other AI image generators, posting the stunning pictures Nano Banana could deliver. 

Nano Banana is an impressive upgrade

Features of Google's new Gemini 2.5 Flash Image model. Google

Gemini already had a powerful built-in image generation model that could edit real photos with text prompts. Nano Banana makes it even easier, bringing new abilities to Gemini. The new AI model's main feature is character permanence. You can upload a photo of yourself to the AI and tell Gemini to create an avatar of you. The AI won't change your face, and the resulting images will look like real photos. Nano Banana can also combine photos of people and pets to create new images; it can swap objects in photos, like clothes; and it can fill in new furniture without changing the room's original design.

Colorizing black-and-white photos seems like the simplest task you could give an advanced AI model like Nano Banana, and that's what Bressane did. Below, you'll find some of the samples he obtained after feeding Gemini old photos and asking the AI to give him color options.

Migrant Mother – 1936

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – 1971

Victory Day in Times Square – 1945

Winston Churchill – 1941

Dovima With Elephants – 1955

Lunch Atop A Skyscraper – 1932

Mushroom Cloud Over Nagasaki – 1945

Flag Raising on Iwo Jima – 1945

How to colorize images with Gemini

A prompt for Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. Google

Bressane posted several other samples of old photos colorized with Nano Banana. All of the images maintain the original details, with the Iwo Jima picture seen above being an exception. The AI modified the flag the soldiers are raising. You could tweak the prompt to prevent such alterations. On the other hand, changing the flag shows Gemini's advanced image editing capabilities, as the AI can figure out the physics of that flag waving in the wind.

Bressane also shared the simple prompt he used to tell the Nano Banana model to colorize the images: "Restore and colorize the picture without altering, removing, or adding any detail or element." That's all he wrote in Freepik, an app that makes Google's Nano Banana available to users. Gemini provided four samples to choose from.

You can use a similar prompt to colorize your old photos with Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image). Before you upload any personal pictures to an AI model for editing purposes, you should ensure you're aware of the privacy implications. You might want to use Gemini to colorize your photos after you ensure Gemini doesn't use your data for training future models.

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