After signing up a few weeks ago, I got around to doing a quick test of Google’s Nano Banana 2 AI in the free ComfyUI cloud. Their Cloud now offers an easy-access free-tier with 400 free credits a month (no rollover). Nano Banana 2 is currently one of the free options.

The image shows the frontage of the local Moreton Old Hall, near Stoke-on-Trent. This cost 32 credits for a huge 5300px 30Mb .PNG output (here resized back to a manageable .JPG). So, at 32 credits for a 5K image restore, you’re looking at maybe 10 images a month with some credits left over for other things.

Good enough for an occasional local history blog, with some manual correction of its colourizing mis-fires and inevitable tendency towards neon oranges (a problem which all colorizers seem to share). Plus a careful consideration of what has been invented by the AI. For instance, here on the original we can see the AI has invented the closed door (open and not visible in the original) and also the stone wall on the right (the grass falls down to the water, in the original). Ideally one would also show the original with the restoration, for articles where details are historically important.

Note that Google Gemini can also do this restoration free, and a lot faster than the Comfy Cloud, but i) there’s only basic control over the image ratio, ii) there’s a discreet watermark, and iii) there are also usage limits. Comfy cloud is slower but appears to gives users a 1:1 ratio-match with the original, no watermark, and .PNG output. Users do however, have to be familiar with the ComfyUI interface, which for the Cloud is simply reproduced online.