business-ecomm_clubhouse/_subsections/02-source_and_choose/S02|L03 - create ai images.org

#+title: S02|L03 - create ai images with nano banana
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- [[../../toc.org][TOC - ecomm clubhouse]]
- [[https://jellyfin.ronnyabraham.com/web/index.html#/details?id=dbb54a81295f2664feea26c5580456d3&serverId=99488804638e465693eed17924c57b60][video]]

* Review
** Summary
This lesson introduces Nano Banana as an AI image generator for creating and editing product art, especially for print-on-demand designs.

** Core Idea
Nano Banana is useful because it follows natural-language instructions well and can revise images while keeping the overall design consistent.

** Practical Value
- Generate cartoon or realistic images
- Edit images through plain-language prompts
- Use reference images for style/concept direction
- Create cross-niche product ideas
- Access through Gemini or Google AI Studio
- Compare subscription pricing vs pay-per-use API pricing

** Access Options

*** Gemini
- easier interface
- useful for beginners
- may include free trial
- requires paid/pro access for best version

*** Google AI Studio
- pay per image
- better for occasional use
- requires API billing setup
- more technical
- allows control over settings like aspect ratio and resolution

** Workflow
1. Generate base image
2. Ask for edits
3. Download image
4. Upscale if needed
5. Remove background in Canva/other editor
6. Turn into POD-ready file

** Important Limitation
Nano Banana may not create true transparent backgrounds.

Best workaround:
- generate on plain white or black background
- remove background later in Canva or another editor

** Cost Logic
If using Google AI Studio:
- each image costs a small amount
- edits also cost money
- repeated revisions increase cost

If generating many images monthly:
- subscription may be cheaper

If generating only a few:
- pay-per-use may be cheaper

** Cost Comparison Checklist [0/4]
- [ ] Estimate number of images needed per month
- [ ] Include revisions/edits in estimate
- [ ] Compare total API cost to subscription cost
- [ ] Choose cheaper option for current workload

** Image Generation Checklist [0/7]
- [ ] Choose target product/design purpose
- [ ] Write clear prompt
- [ ] Specify style (cartoon, doodle, realistic, etc.)
- [ ] Specify background color
- [ ] Review output
- [ ] Request edits if needed
- [ ] Download final image

** POD Preparation Checklist [0/6]
- [ ] Upscale image if needed
- [ ] Remove background
- [ ] Add/edit text in Canva or design app
- [ ] Export as PNG
- [ ] Use transparent background
- [ ] Test on product mockup

** Warnings
- Free versions may include watermarks
- Pricing and access may change
- API use can add up with many revisions
- Do not assume generated backgrounds are actually transparent
- Always check image quality before printing
- Do not copy reference designs too closely

** Key Insight
The tool is strongest when used interactively.

Prompt → review → edit → refine

This is better than expecting one perfect image from one prompt.

** My Take
Nano Banana is useful as an art-generation and editing tool, but it is not the full production workflow.

You still need:
- human product judgment
- background cleanup
- upscaling
- layout work
- POD export preparation

** Bottom Line
Use Nano Banana to quickly create and revise design assets.

Then use Canva or another editor to turn those assets into clean, print-ready product files.


* Transcript
#+begin_example
00:00
Hey, everyone. So this here is,

00:03
1 of my favorite

00:04
AI image generators right now, Nano Banana. I have been

00:07
increasingly using Nano Banana more and more. I still use

00:11
multiple

00:12
AI image generators.

00:14
Currently, I've got Nanobanana that I'm using. I'm using Midjourney.

00:18
I'm using ChatGPT's

00:19
image generator.

00:20
And should any more image generators come out that are

00:24
excellent, I'm sure I will pick them up as well.

00:26
But Nanobanana

00:27
is currently, right now, probably the 1 I go to

00:30
the most.

00:31
So this is Google's AI image generator,

00:35
and, there are actually 2 versions of it. So there

00:38
is a pro version and there is a free version.

00:42
The pro version is what I use. I use the

00:45
pro version for 2 reasons. Number 1, the free version

00:48
comes with,

00:49
a watermark,

00:50
whereas any images made on the pro version currently do

00:53
not have a watermark.

00:54
And secondly, the images are just better. And 1 of

00:58
the things about Nitto Banana that is so nice is

01:00
that it's not just about the fact that it creates

01:04
great images.

01:05
It's about the fact that

01:07
you can,

01:08
have a lot more control

01:10
over what you create with it because it's got such

01:14
great natural language learning capabilities,

01:17
built into it,

01:18
and also because of the fact that it's very, very

01:22
good at following instructions.

01:24
That's been the really cool thing about Deno Banana is

01:27
that it's brought in a new era of AI image

01:30
generators that are very, very good at staying consistent,

01:33
both with following your instructions and also

01:37
with consistency

01:38
just across images in general. And the other AI image

01:41
generators have copied of Nuna Banana's,

01:45
you know, revolution in that regard.

01:47
But it was the first to truly get it right.

01:50
And plus, it's also extremely good with text as well.

01:53
Now

01:54
there are 2 ways that you can access Nano Banana.

01:57
The first is through Gemini,

01:59
which is Google's own version of ChatGPT.

02:03
And the second version is through the Google AI Studio.

02:07
Now,

02:08
these are quite different ways to, to access it.

02:12
So for reference,

02:14
if you access it through Gemini,

02:17
Google's version of Chat GPT,

02:19
you will need to have the pro version of Gemini.

02:23
And currently, right now, you can get access to a,

02:27
a subscription for the pro version

02:29
for free for 1 month. So normally it costs 20

02:32
US dollars a month for a subscription,

02:34
and that gets you access to all of their pro

02:37
features.

02:38
And to be fair, these are fantastic features as well

02:41
in their own right.

02:43
But

02:43
in addition to all this, you get access to the

02:45
pro version of Nano Banana.

02:48
And so for many people, at least to start with,

02:51
this is probably what they will do. They will go

02:54
ahead, get Nano Banana

02:56
through or they'll access, they'll get a free Gemini Pro

02:59
subscription. And then when you're in here, you can come

03:01
and you can click create an image. So you can

03:03
do it that way, or you can come here to

03:05
tools, and you can click to create an image.

03:09
So So this is 1 way to access Standard Banana.

03:11
The second way to access it, of course, is through

03:13
the Google AI Studio.

03:16
Now the thing about the Google AI Studio is that

03:18
it's not free. You actually need to connect a credit

03:21
card through setting up an API key, which is very

03:23
bit very easy to do. You can just follow the

03:26
on screen instructions to do it.

03:29
You just need to basically add your credit card in

03:31
through the form of an API

03:33
key, and then you pay

03:35
per image that you generate.

03:38
Now as I'll show you, each image that you generate

03:42
generally costs a few cents.

03:44
So when you think about it,

03:47
initially, you might start out using Nano Banana through Gemini

03:51
because the fact that you can access it for free.

03:53
And if you have good reason to want to stay

03:55
subscribed to the pro version, I'm I'm subscribed to the

03:58
ultra version. So I love Gemini

04:01
as a tool. I think it's very great, very helpful.

04:04
It's been a huge

04:06
improvement for my life even. I use Gemini to help

04:09
me,

04:10
do market research recently when buying some property,

04:13
and I used the ultra,

04:17
AI version of Deep Research. So

04:20
I love Gemini,

04:22
but you might not find that there's a reason to

04:24
stay subscribed to Gemini

04:26
Pro,

04:28
outside of, Netter Banana. If so, then it will make

04:32
more sense for you in the future to switch

04:35
to the Google AI Studio because then you can just

04:38
generate each image that you need and pay a few

04:40
cents.

04:41
So in this tutorial, I'm gonna take you through both.

04:46
We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna start out on

04:49
the Gemini app, and then I'll show you how to

04:53
use

04:54
the Google AI Studio.

04:56
Alright. Let's start out then with Gemini.

04:59
So, of course, as I mentioned before, within Gemini, if

05:02
you want to access Nanobanana,

05:04
you come to the tools and you select create an

05:06
image, or if the tools are available down there for

05:08
you, you can select it too.

05:11
Now there are 2 main ways that you'll generally create

05:14
an image with Nano Banana.

05:16
The first is just simply asking it to create an

05:19
image for you, and it is really, really great at

05:24
doing that. So let's try creating something now.

05:27
Let's create

05:30
a cartoon

05:32
doodle

05:33
of

05:34
a husky,

05:37
white background.

05:42
And I'm filming this all in real time, by the

05:44
way, so that you can see generally how long it

05:47
takes to work. Because when you try to create

05:50
designs at scale, to upload, to create products at scale,

05:54
it's actually quite useful to know how many seconds a

05:57
tool takes, particularly when you start stacking tools on top

06:00
of each other. If 1 tool takes 1 minute and

06:03
then another tool, you're using another, like, 5 other tools

06:05
and they take a minute, then you can calculate how

06:08
many designs effectively you can create per hour.

06:11
Alright. So here is the little doodle that it made

06:14
for us.

06:15
So we could now go in and ask for some

06:17
changes. So we could say,

06:20
can you color the husky?

06:28
In the past,

06:30
it was so much harder to make these sorts of

06:32
changes.

06:34
But now it's so easy

06:36
that we can just be using a chatbot like this.

06:40
So

06:41
I definitely personally currently prefer to be generating images in

06:44
this way,

06:45
just having a natural learning.

06:48
And and yep.

06:50
Sorry. Natural,

06:51
language learning experience with it.

06:54
Here I see. Now it's colored it for us just

06:56
like that. Let's say I wanted to,

06:59
remove the collar.

07:02
Can you remove the collar?

07:13
And so now it's gonna go ahead, and it's gonna

07:15
remove that collar for us.

07:17
And it's going to fill in the difference with the

07:20
husky

07:22
and just show, the husky's fur.

07:37
Look at that.

07:38
We no longer have a collar on our cute little

07:41
husky.

07:43
So it's actually super easy to come in here and

07:45
edit these images.

07:47
You just ask for specifically what you want.

07:50
So if you want to download an image, you can

07:53
also just come and click to download the image in

07:55
full size. And the pro version does have high resolution

07:59
images,

08:01
but I would still recommend that you

08:04
increase the resolution,

08:06
and try making as high as possible. So if you're

08:08
going ahead and editing these images within Canva like I

08:11
do, then I would still use the upscaler tool to

08:14
upscale images.

08:18
So that is 1 way to be able to create

08:21
images, just simply working with it and getting it to

08:23
create what you want.

08:25
And just for reference, it's also extremely good at creating

08:29
realistic

08:30
pictures as well, not just cartoons.

08:33
So

08:35
create a photo of

08:47
and something that I think is quite remarkable when you

08:49
compare it to earlier versions of AI art generators,

08:53
such as Chechi Petit's earlier AI image generator, is that

08:56
back in the day, if you had asked it to

08:59
make a change to the husky and you'd asked it

09:01
to remove the collar,

09:02
it would have redrawn the entire image, and the image

09:05
would not have looked identical.

09:08
So

09:10
here we go.

09:12
As you can see, it looks scarily realistic.

09:15
So you can indeed make realistic images too with Nano

09:19
Banana, not just cartoon style images.

09:23
So let's try a different way, though. So another way

09:26
that you can create images is you can use reference

09:29
images,

09:30
and reference images can be extremely

09:32
helpful.

09:34
So

09:35
here is

09:36
a picture of a t shirt which,

09:39
has done well over the Christmas period,

09:42
this

09:43
year. 6 7, if you don't know what it is,

09:45
is an Internet meme, and it's an Internet meme that's

09:48
popular with gen alpha

09:50
and in to a lesser extent, I think, gen z.

09:53
So depending upon which, generation bracket you're in, you may

09:57
have not heard about it.

09:59
Either way, it's an Internet meme, and,

10:02
the meme involves both 6 7, and there's also, like,

10:06
a little hand gesture. It relates to a viral video.

10:10
So somebody came and took this meme

10:13
and made it Christmas themed, and it was popular. You

10:16
know? It's gotten,

10:18
it's gotten over 4000 views. It was over 4000 sales

10:22
in the past month.

10:23
And on Amazon,

10:26
they will have, sales brackets. So it'll say 4000 plus

10:30
sales in the past month or 5000 plus sales in

10:32
the past month. So we know that this has sold

10:34
anywhere from 4000 sales to 4999

10:38
sales. Although even if it had only sold 4000 sales,

10:41
that's a lot of t shirts.

10:44
So something that you can do is you can find

10:46
popular designs online

10:48
and then you can repurpose them.

10:52
And

10:55
Nanobanana is fantastic at this. So

11:00
I took some examples of t shirts. There was another

11:03
more generic 6 7 t shirt that had done well,

11:06
which the Christmas 1 was based off of. So taking

11:09
some screenshots here of these shirts.

11:14
I like

11:16
this concept

11:18
for a t shirt,

11:20
but I would like it to be

11:24
Halloween

11:25
themed.

11:26
Can you make for me

11:29
a Halloween

11:30
themed

11:32
6 7 t shirt with the meme hand

11:37
gesture?

11:38
Oops.

11:40
Here we go.

11:46
And so now we're targeting an entirely

11:48
different

11:50
customer base

11:51
because we're targeting people who are interested in Halloween themed

11:56
shirts. So this is a good example of a cross

11:59
formula idea

12:00
where we take a popular T shirt format,

12:04
and then we cross it together with an entirely different

12:06
niche to create something very new that's targeting a different

12:09
customer base so that we're not,

12:13
just trying to take sales away by copying the preexisting

12:16
design, but we're reaching an entirely different customer base.

12:21
So here we go. Be like,

12:25
remove the

12:27
text and remove the glow effect.

12:38
You can also,

12:41
when it when it starts to think, you can go

12:43
ahead and you can see it's thinking as well, which

12:45
is quite interesting. If you're a little bit nerdy like

12:48
me and you like to see how it's, how it

12:51
works.

12:53
You can just click this,

12:56
and then you'll be able to see,

12:58
what's actually going on under the surface

13:02
as it's working.

13:04
And here it is.

13:06
And look, it did an excellent job,

13:09
of, following my instructions here. Of course, it's on this

13:13
T shirt, which we don't want.

13:15
I just want the design

13:18
on a

13:19
plain

13:20
black

13:22
background,

13:23
not a T shirt.

13:31
And so now it'll come in,

13:34
and it will remove the T shirt portion of this

13:37
design,

13:39
and it will just draw it straight onto a plain

13:42
background

13:45
for us. And the reason why I pick a black

13:48
background

13:49
is just because it will be easy to remove it

13:52
with a background remover in, say, Canva.

13:55
Currently, within Nano Banana, you cannot

13:58
create images on a transparent background. That might change in

14:01
the future depending upon when you were watching this. They

14:03
may have added it. Right now, you cannot put images

14:06
onto a transparent background.

14:08
It'll show the transparent. It'll make it look transparent, but

14:11
it won't actually be transparent, but it will mimic the

14:13
the little squares that you see.

14:16
It's not actually transparent. So currently,

14:18
the easiest way to remove a background

14:21
of an image you make with it is to put

14:23
it onto a plain background

14:25
and to then use a background remover to get rid

14:28
of it.

14:32
And here we go. It has done this for us.

14:35
So now we could download this and then pop it

14:38
into,

14:40
a program like Canva

14:42
and then edit it and turn it into a t

14:45
shirt design that is suitable for us.

14:47
So

14:48
this is 1 way to access,

14:51
Nanobanana

14:52
through Gemini. However, as I said,

14:55
while it will be the cheapest way initially to start

14:57
with most likely because of the fact that they're currently

14:59
giving away a free 1 month trial,

15:03
depending upon whether

15:05
you have access to that trial, depending on it, like,

15:07
it might be that by the time you're watching this,

15:09
the trial is no longer being offered.

15:12
Or it may be that you've already had your 1

15:14
month trial, and,

15:17
you would now have to pay 20 dollars a month

15:19
for it. You may not need to keep your access

15:21
to Gemini Pro.

15:23
So in which case, it could be better for you

15:25
to switch to the Google AI Studio,

15:27
and I will show you how to use that right

15:29
now. Alright. Here is the Google AI Studio. So as

15:33
I said, this is a different way that you can

15:35
access Nano Banana.

15:37
So to access the Google AI Studio,

15:40
the URL is literally just a I studio dot Google

15:43
dot com. And, of course, you can always Google it,

15:47
and you'll be able to access it there. The Google

15:50
AI Studio

15:51
is mostly aimed at professionals

15:54
because the interesting thing is that with Gemini, if you're

15:58
accessing Google's AI tools through Gemini, you have limited access,

16:01
particularly

16:02
for things like, say,

16:04
the Yo 3, which is their,

16:07
video generator. With those, you have daily limits. And there

16:10
are also daily limits, for how much you can use

16:13
Nano Banana as well, but you're unlikely to hit them.

16:16
So

16:18
with the Google AI Studio, you can have unlimited access

16:21
to their tools

16:22
because instead of having 1 subscription giving you access to

16:26
a bunch of,

16:29
your,

16:30
data that's a sort of preset preset limits. With the

16:33
Google AI Studio, it's unlimited and you pay per usage.

16:37
So the Gemini

16:39
subscription is great value if you utilize all of your

16:42
limits.

16:43
But

16:44
if you are only using a small amount, you actually

16:47
can save a lot of money by just generating your

16:50
images through the Google AI studio.

16:52
So it's entirely up to you, but this is a

16:55
great hack to know about because it might save you

16:57
money.

16:59
So

16:59
inside of here, you've got 2 different ways currently to

17:03
access Nano Banana.

17:04
If it's here available on the what's new, you can

17:06
click that, but it's probably not always gonna be new.

17:09
So if you come to the playground,

17:11
then you can come up here and you can choose,

17:14
which tool you want to use. We want to use

17:17
Nano Banana Pro.

17:19
Now using Nano Banana

17:21
Pro is very, very similar to how it is within

17:24
Gemini.

17:24
1 change is that

17:26
over on the side here, you can make some direct

17:29
you you can set some settings up immediately. So for

17:32
example, you can change your aspect ratio,

17:34
and you can change your resolution.

17:36
Now changing a resolution

17:38
will increase how much the toke how many tokens get

17:41
used. Tokens are how they calculate how much how expensive

17:45
an image is and how much it's gonna cost you.

17:48
The more tokens your, image uses,

17:51
the more expensive it's gonna be. So you probably wanna

17:53
keep this at 1 k resolution because we can increase

17:57
the resolution

17:58
within Canva. And chances are you're probably going to want

18:01
to be you to using Canva to turn your image

18:04
into a print ready file anyway

18:07
or some other graphic design app. And,

18:10
Canva has an AI upscaler included within it.

18:14
So

18:15
I would keep it at the lowest resolution to save

18:18
money.

18:19
And then we come here for the prompt, and it's

18:21
it's the same thing.

18:22
Let's just see. We want a

18:25
draw

18:26
a doodle

18:27
of a

18:29
husky on a white

18:31
background.

18:42
So you can see here it says that I've got

18:44
a paid API key.

18:46
So you can come and click here to add in

18:48
an API key. You can follow the instructions,

18:51
but love to show you how to do it. Unfortunately,

18:54
there's a lot of secure credit card data there, which

18:57
is too hard for me to hide. So I can't

19:00
show you how to set up an API key, but

19:02
it is quite similar.

19:04
And here it is.

19:05
I'm actually not super fond with this.

19:09
But,

19:10
either way, it would be very easy to go back

19:13
to

19:14
and get it to change it. Of course, every time

19:16
you ask it to change it within the Google AI

19:18
studio, it uses more tokens. You can see we've so

19:21
far used 529

19:22
tokens, and I'll

19:24
calculate later on how much this has cost me. It's

19:27
only cost me. Like, we're talking cents here. This is

19:30
not dollars. This is cents.

19:34
Remove the icons

19:37
around that husky

19:39
and make the

19:42
well, I guess it's got the eyes because of the

19:43
fact that some of the huskies have, different colored eyes.

19:47
So that's not so bad. But the

19:49
but I'll still go and make the eyes

19:54
the same.

20:02
We'll just get it to do that to see if

20:03
we can

20:05
see what it would be like if it did it

20:08
as an experiment.

20:16
And you can also come and

20:18
view the,

20:19
thinking as well, which is always very interesting.

20:25
Look. It did it.

20:26
So it made the eyes the same type of, same

20:30
sort of, like, same eye style,

20:32
and it got rid of the

20:34
got it got rid of the,

20:36
the icons around it. So you can see, though, that

20:39
it's definitely increased our usage. We've basically doubled the tokens

20:42
that we've used before. Again,

20:44
we will calculate that later.

20:46
So here we are inside of Gemini API pricing, and

20:49
we can see here that currently,

20:51
it is 0.134

20:54
dollars, so 13.4

20:57
cents,

20:58
per image because of the fact that it is 12

21:01
dollars per 1000000 tokens. And generally speaking, an image works

21:05
out to be about 1000 tokens. So that means then

21:08
that you're paying about 13.4

21:10
US cents

21:11
per image. Now

21:13
this is where you need to do the math because

21:15
you think about it. A Gemini Pro subscription

21:19
costs 20 dollars.

21:22
So if you want it to,

21:25
see if it's cheaper or not for you to be

21:28
using the API studio,

21:30
then what you wanna do is you wanna divide this

21:34
by

21:36
the cost of each image,

21:38
and it comes out to 149

21:41
images.

21:42
Now it's actually quite easy to generate more than 149

21:45
images. It is very easy to generate

21:48
150

21:48
plus images, but it depends upon how much time you

21:51
have and how quickly you are growing and scaling

21:54
your your store and your business.

21:56
So if you're creating a lot of images,

21:59
then you,

22:01
will

22:02
want to probably switch to the Gemini Pro account because

22:06
then you'd have access to a lot more images,

22:09
especially if you want to then access any of the

22:11
other benefits of Gemini Pro because you get free storage

22:13
with Gemini Pro, free cloud storage, and you get access

22:17
to VEO 3, their, video generator.

22:20
So if you and also, yeah, but you you get

22:23
greater access to their chatbot as well, and,

22:27
you can access,

22:29
that at higher rates. So

22:32
if that makes sense for you, then you can totally

22:34
do that. But if you think that currently right now,

22:36
you're not able to spend a lot of time on

22:38
your business and you're only adding a few products a

22:40
month, then you could end up saving quite a bit

22:43
of money if you just

22:45
generate each image individually.

22:48
But, yes, that is how to use,

22:50
Nanobanana.

22:52
I hope that, you find it as helpful,

22:56
as I have.
#+end_example