How to get free AI headshots that don't look fake - with Nano Banana 2

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ZDNET's key takeaways

AI can turn casual photos into polished portraits.
Prompt tweaks control lighting, style, and wardrobe.
Results rival traditional corporate headshots.

The first time most of you posed for professional headshots was for school photos. You got dressed up (as best you could when at grade school, high school, or college), posed in front of a featureless background, and tried to smile.

I missed my high school yearbook photos because I skipped my senior year. But I couldn't avoid my undergraduate yearbook in engineering school. After that, I think I posed for professional photos three or four times, once for a book jacket, and a few times for corporate photos.

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In each case, the photographer was expensive, and the experience was difficult. The most productive headshot was when I went to a Sears Photo Studio (remember it?) with my wife, and she and the photographer chose appropriate backdrops and cajoled me into a memorable photo. They demonstrated the patience of saints.

Today, professional photo shoot results can be achieved without the photographer, and even without posing for a formal photo shoot. That's because of AI, of course.

Recently, I've started seeing ads like these appearing all over LinkedIn and Facebook. I haven't been able to escape them, even when I opt out. For every one I opt out of, another shows up from a different vendor.

But do you need to pay a random AI service for a professional headshot? No, of course not. In this article, I'll show you how to use Google's Nano Banana 2 to create professional headshots for free (or at least as part of the $20 Google AI Pro plan). You actually can do this task for free, but you may have to wait a few hours between image generations. If you're patient, that's a fine way to go.

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Intrepid ZDNET contributors Steven Vaughan-Nichols and Artie Beaty volunteered to be our test subjects this time. Steven contributed one image that transformed quite nicely. Artie contributed three shots, and the one I chose to use worked out quite well. I'll show you the prompt I used to prepare that image, as well.

Let's get started with Steven.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols

Here's Steven's original image. It's not bad. It already features a nice smile. Let's take that shot and turn it into a studio portrait.

I was able to achieve a good portrait with a single three-part prompt. Let's look at that first:

Produce a hyper-realistic, formal portrait depicting the subject in a dark navy suit. Preserve the exact same facial features and hairstyle from the reference image. The expression should convey powerful confidence and composure, with a subtle sense of authority and intelligence.

This part of the prompt tells Gemini to keep Steven as Steven. The AI changes his expression from a grin to a more corporate, confident look, but it's very clear this is our guy. I also put him in a classic navy blue suit, but I did not specify the tie. I'll come back to that part in a bit:

Use refined, dramatic lighting, soft studio illumination with delicate shadows that define and enhance facial contours. The background should feel understated yet upscale, such as charcoal, deep taupe, or a smooth black gradient.

This part describes the studio environment. I could have gone with more color, but I wanted a very traditional corporate portrait. The prompt also includes lighting notes to separate Steven's head from the background:

Capture the image in a premium editorial style with crisp focus and cinematic depth of field, as if shot on an 85mm lens. Ensure extremely high detail, consistent with a polished corporate portrait and luxury brand aesthetic.

This part helps position the image as if you were specifying it to a photographer. The 85mm lens is often used to create flattering portraits with strong background blur and natural perspective, so I added that element to the mix.

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I pasted all three parts into my prompt field as one prompt. Here's the result. It's pretty impressive:

I chose to leave the little Gemini logo in the lower-right corner for this article. Gemini always adds the logo, even if you're using the paid version I'm using. You can remove it using photo-editing apps. Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill would do the job quite well.

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Back in the day, I worked for a VC-backed computer company. It required all of us to wear red "regimental" ties. These are classic striped ties with a certain look it liked. I thought one of those ties would look better on Steven than the AI-generated option. So, I told Nano Banana, "Convert the tie to a red regimental stripe tie. Keep everything else identical and unchanged." Here's the result:

I think that shot is great for corporate purposes. But I'm not done. I want to do one for fun. See, I've always considered Linux expert Steven to be a ZDNET rock star. So, here's a prompt for that picture:

Dress the subject as if he's the star performer of a metal band, but don't change his face or use facial makeup. Make the post appropriate for a publicity shot for an album. Make his T-shirt say Linux. Have electricity shoot out of the top of the guitar, but don't obstruct the subject.

Yeah, Steven. You're welcome. I mean, he makes that prompt look good:

Artie Beaty

Artie gave me three snapshots to choose from. The one on the lower left has the best color, but the one with his wife has much higher resolution. So, I decided to start with that picture.

The first thing I had to do was isolate him in the photo. I used this prompt:

Remove the woman from the image and make the man face forward and centered. Preserve the exact same facial features and hairstyle from the reference image.

That prompt worked great, but I am concerned about the lighting and that his eyes are in shadow. Rather than fixing those things specifically, I decided to use the same prompt I used for Steven's corporate portrait and see the results. That approach turned out to be a good idea, because Nano Banana returned this image:

That's great! Once again, though, I want a red tie, so I gave the same regimental tie prompt I used with Steven's image. And here's what Nano Banana returned:

I really like how Nano Banana added the classic crossed-arms pose. Now we have a great photo for corporate use. But, of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I had to do a fun one. Artie's ZDNET bio says, "On the weekends you'll find him leading haunted ghost tours of uptown Charlotte."

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Who you gonna call? That's right. I fed Nano Banana the prompt, "Dress the subject as if he's a Ghostbuster. Do not change his face or use facial makeup. Make the post appropriate for a publicity shot." Here's the output:

The only gotcha is that Artie isn't Spengler. So, let's fix that. I prompted, "Remove the Ghostbuster patch and change the name to BEATY." Here's what we got:

Gotta give it to Nano Banana 2. The text rendering was perfect, making the letters look like they were embroidered onto the uniform.

Go pro

As you can see, there's no reason to pay the big bucks to the purveyors of social media ads. If you want a professional-looking photo, use my prompt and go for it. You can also change up the background specification if you want, but you can't really go wrong with a classic look like the one I've demonstrated here.

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Special thanks to Steven and Artie for being my test subjects and for being such good sports.

What about you? Have you tried using AI tools like Google Gemini to create professional headshots? How did your results compare to traditional photography? Do you think prompts like these are enough to replace a photographer, or do they still fall short in some ways? Would you pay for a dedicated AI headshot service, or stick with tools you already have access to? Let us know in the comments below.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.

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