Gemini 3 Pro Image
Ranked 13 of 22 image generation models by recommenders
Praised for image editing and understanding prompts better than OpenAI's models; critics say strict filters block requests and it often returns images unchanged.
Praised for image editing and understanding prompts better than OpenAI's models; critics say strict filters block requests and it often returns images unchanged.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 58%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Preferred over OpenAI for workflows
“OpenAI wouldn't make me a Looney Tunes Roadrunner Martin Scorsese "Absolute Cinema" parody, but Gemini didn't blink about the trademark violation.”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream” “Gemini/Nano Banana is notably better at understanding and generating images than OpenAI”
Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Google's Antigravity Bait and Switch” “Google in my opinion is the best for my workflows”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Nano Banana 2 Lite” Strong output quality overall
“for what we believe is technically superior output”
Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “Nano Banana Pro (4K) at $0.04/image” “Their image models are kicking ass though.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Gemini 3 Deep Think” “stunningly good at just about everything”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now” - Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Nano Banana 2 – New 4K-Level AI Image Model Just Dropped”
Handles image editing well
“we can see Gemini do what I wanted, so it's clearly not impossible”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “GPT Image 1.5” “outside of image editing in Gemini pro 3 image, it is not”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Google Got Its Groove Back and Edged Ahead of OpenAI”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Filters block many requests
“Google's models are excellent at making adult content, they just have aggressive pre and post filtering, but it's not perfect”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Musk's X could be banned in Britain over AI chatbot row” “Gemini rejects anything involving a well known person. Anything.”
Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream” Returns image unchanged or repeats
“After half a dozen it just started kicking out the same image over and over again no matter what the prompt said.”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “The "confident idiot" problem: Why AI needs hard rules, not vibe checks” “Gemini has a problem where it often returns the image unchanged or almost unchanged”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “We ran over 600 image generations to compare AI image models” Poor instruction following
“I simply could not get any Gemini models to produce the right output.”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream” “Gemini struggles to follow the specification given”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Nano Banana can be prompt engineered for nuanced AI image generation” “this one it just did not seem to understand”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “FLUX 3 Image” Output subtly off or approximate
“looks worse but qualifies as a bad approximation of the task”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “We ran over 600 image generations to compare AI image models” “current gemini output (supposedly) tends to be subtly off”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Nano Banana 2 Lite”
Other image generation models people recommend
The four most recommended other image generation models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nano Banana | 265 | 159 | 63% | 12 | 6 mo5 owners | — |
| gpt-image-1 | 79 | 79 | 50% | 12 | — | — |
| FLUX.2 | 66 | 51 | 56% | 10 | — | — |
| gpt-image-2 | 63 | 26 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Gemini 3 Pro ImageThis page | 15 | 11 | 58% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
25 of the 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“this one it just did not seem to understand”
“Gemini 3 Pro Image (stronger pattern)”
“current gemini output (supposedly) tends to be subtly off”
“Google in my opinion is the best for my workflows”
“Gemini/Nano Banana is notably better at understanding and generating images than OpenAI”
“there's literally zero reason to generate anything above 1K”
“The API doc you linked is misleading.”
“Google and OpenAI are good for one-offs”
“Gemini is extremely overpriced.”
“OpenAI wouldn't make me a Looney Tunes Roadrunner Martin Scorsese "Absolute Cinema" parody, but Gemini didn't blink about the trademark violation.”
“I simply could not get any Gemini models to produce the right output.”
“Gemini rejects anything involving a well known person. Anything.”
“Their image models are kicking ass though.”
“Google's models are excellent at making adult content, they just have aggressive pre and post filtering, but it's not perfect”
“outside of image editing in Gemini pro 3 image, it is not”
“we can see Gemini do what I wanted, so it's clearly not impossible”
“stunningly good at just about everything”
“After half a dozen it just started kicking out the same image over and over again no matter what the prompt said.”
“for what we believe is technically superior output”
“which is the world's best”
“strong 4K-level output, fast rendering, and surprisingly good multi-image fusion”
“Gemini struggles to follow the specification given”
“looks worse but qualifies as a bad approximation of the task”
“Gemini has a problem where it often returns the image unchanged or almost unchanged”
“Gemini seemed unwilling to give up the specific details of the child's face”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.