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Try these tips and prompts for spooky AI images

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Try these tips and prompts for spooky AI images

Oct 24, 2025

Whether you want a pumpkin-themed menu for your party or want to see what costume your pup looks best in, there’s a Google AI tool that can help you visualize it.

Molly McHugh-Johnson

Contributor, The Keyword

General summary

Get ready for fall with Google AI tools. Use Nano Banana to create spooky scenes or Google Photos for Halloween Remixes. Try Mixboard for costume ideas or Veo to generate scary movies. Canvas can even turn images into pumpkin carving templates.

Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.

Bullet points

"Try these tips and prompts for spooky AI images" shows how to make festive visuals.
Nano Banana can turn your selfies into ghostly portraits or create creepy party invites.
Google Photos' Remix feature now has a Halloween option to transform your pictures.
Use Mixboard to brainstorm unique Halloween costume ideas for yourself or even pets.
Veo can generate short scary movies or festive videos from images or descriptions.

Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.

Basic explainer

This article tells you how to make spooky pictures with Google's help. You can use tools like Nano Banana to make scary images or turn your cat into a wizard. Google Photos can also remix your pictures into Halloween styles. You can even make short scary movies or pumpkin carving templates.

Summaries were generated by Google AI. Generative AI is experimental.

Explore other styles:

A collage of Halloween-themed photos, including a woman in a vintage portrait, a woman on a phone with a ghost in the background, two other women, and a dog in three different costumes.

Between the fiery leaves, pumpkins and creative costumes, fall is definitely an eye-catching season. Get into the spirit by creating your own spooky, festive and fun visuals — whether you need party invites or outfit ideas, there’s a Google AI tool you can use to help you bring your idea to life.

1. Create spooky scenes, invites and more with Nano Banana

There are so many options for creating mind-blowing images with our latest image generation model, Nano Banana. You could ask it to turn your selfie into a ghostly portrait, give it the necessary details and create a creepy party invite or create a nostalgic scary movie poster starring…you!

Ask Nano Banana to turn you into a spooky Victorian-era ghost. Try this prompt with your photo: “Transform this person into a semi-skeletal spectral translucent Victorian ghost. Victorian clothing. Maintain existing pose and framing. ultra-realistic photograph. black and white Daguerreotype. wet plate photography. streaks. stains.”

A young woman lies on a bed with purple satin sheets, talking on a vintage purple telephone. In the dark doorway behind her, a figure in a white sheet ghost costume stands watching.

To make your own scary movie poster, use your photo with this prompt: “Create a photo of me in a dream Y2K style portrait of me laying in shiny purple bedding as I hold a large 90s-style landline in a daydreaming pose. My long hair falls freely in loose curls. I wear delicate jewelry and gold chunky rings. The room behind me is girly with 90s-style posters that are license-free. My makeup is simple yet glamorous with pink lip gloss. The photo should have a grainy 90s style with a light source like a lamp in a dimply lit room at night. A 90s photo album rests beside me with a disposable camera. A ghost in a bedsheet stands behind me staring at me, slightly transparent, with its body dimly lit, and it should be standing in the doorway of a dimly lit hallway. The background behind it should be slightly dark and ominous.

A two-panel image showing a before-and-after of a cat. On the left, a real photo shows a fluffy orange and white cat with folded ears lying on a bed. On the right, an anime-style illustration depicts the same cat as a wizard, wearing a blue hat and cape and holding a magical staff.

Or try a prompt like “turn my cat, Sunny, into a cartoon character wearing a wizard costume.” Nano Banana will generate an image like this for you, and from there you can upload it to Gemini and use the Storybook feature to build an entire narrative around the picture.

You can even start with Nano Banana’s image-generation capabilities and then take your creation and turn it into a short, illustrated story. Try a prompt like “turn my cat, Sunny, into a cartoon character wearing a wizard costume.” Nano Banana will generate an image for you, and from there you can use it to create a story with Gemini — check out the final result.

2. Let Google Photos give your pictures a Halloween remix

Google Photos’ Remix ¹ feature uses AI to transform a photo into a different style, like a 3D animation, anime or sketch — and now, there’s a new Halloween Remix option (check out the new Claymation, Pixel Art and Ukiyo-e styles too). Just open Google Photos and head to your Create tab. From there simply select Remix, pick an image and choose the Halloween Remix style.

A man and woman smile and pose closely together for a selfie, both wearing sunglasses. They are outdoors, and a hillside with buildings is visible in the background under a clear sky.

A screenshot of a mobile phone screen displaying an app interface. The app is titled Remix and shows a section to Select a style, featuring a cartoon illustration of a woman. Below this, it shows the selected photo to be remixed, which is the selfie of the man and woman from the previous image. A Generate button is at the bottom.

A screenshot of a mobile phone screen showing the result from the Remix app. It displays a cartoon illustration of the man and woman from the previous selfie, reimagined as wizard-like characters wearing green capes and sunglasses, standing inside a fantasy-style library.

Android users in the U.S. can also ask Google Photos for festive or spooky edits right in the photo editor by tapping “Help me edit.”

3. Come up with costume ideas using Mixboard

Mixboard is an AI experiment from Google Labs that helps you visualize and explore your ideas. It’s great when you have a concept in mind but want to see where it could go or what else you could come up with. Give it a shot at coming up with Halloween costumes — maybe just for yourself, a couples’ or group costume or even your pet.

A screenshot of a web interface showing a collage of a small, white, fluffy dog in ten different Halloween costumes, including a lion, cowboy, pumpkin, superhero, and ghost. A text prompt at the bottom reads: Dress my dog in different costumes for halloween.

4. Generate a short scary movie or festive video with Veo

We recently released Veo 3.1, our latest state-of-the-art video generation model; it’s even better at adhering to your prompts and allows for richer audio, more narrative control and other improvements. You can take an image and turn it into a video — like these moving portraits — or just describe an idea from scratch and see what it comes up with.

A screenshot of the Gemini 2.5 Pro app interface on a dark background. A card shows a text prompt describing a video scene, with a portion highlighted in yellow, which reads: Frontal static view, medium angle. An ornate dark wood frame on a dim stone wall, with a figure emerging slowly through the painting. She grips the frame, pulling her torso and then her legs through, one by one.

Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.

A screenshot of the Gemini 2.5 Pro app interface on a dark background. A card shows a text prompt describing a video scene, with a portion highlighted in green, which reads: She grips the frame, pulling her torso and then her legs through, one by one. She steps down onto the floor, leaving the painting empty.

Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.

A screenshot of the Gemini 2.5 Pro app interface on a dark background. A card shows a text prompt describing a video scene, with a portion highlighted in red, which reads: remains intact and the painting's background remains visible throughout. The scene is softly lit in low light.

Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.

Veo can take your image and this prompt and generate a spooky animation.

If you don’t want to go the scary route, describe a cute autumn scene to send as a fall-themed greeting to friends and family. Bonus points if you host a get-together and have your video looping on the TV in the background!

This video was made using the prompt: “Make a video that shows two dogs — one is a small orange, white and black shepherd and the other is a small, all-golden cocker spaniel mixed with a King Charles spaniel. The dogs walk out of a house in a tree-lined neighborhood. There are fall leaves falling and pumpkins on porches. The dogs are trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. At the end, the words "Happy Halloween!" come up on the screen. It should be no longer than 30 seconds; the style should be cute and sketched.”

5. Use Canvas to turn an image into a pumpkin carving template

Gemini’s Canvas tool is great at taking creative ideas and turning them into web apps, interactive visualizations and more. In fact, it can even take an image and generate a pumpkin carving template for you. You can ask it to “make an app that turns my selfie into a jack-o’-lantern and gives me a design I can carve at home.”

Now the actual carving and clean-up is going to be all you!

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Remix is available to Google Photos users on Android and iOS in the U.S.