The End of ImageFX

House alien.
by Flow.

 For several weeks I have been seeing a message inside Google's ImageFX saying that Google is terminating ImageFX on April 30th 2026. Today I clicked the button to transfer my old saved images from ImageFX to Google's Flow. It only took Google a few minutes to transfer over to Flow my old ImageFX images going back to January 2025.

Any of the old ImageFX-generated images can now be edited by Flow using Nano Banana 2. I also have access to the original text prompts that ImageFX used to make the images. An example is shown below in Figure 1...

Figure 1. The end of ImageFX.

Inside the ImageFX Creations folder in Google's Flow.

The original text prompt for the image that is shown above was: "science fiction movie still, a futuristic mansion on a distant exoplanet, the mansion is surrounded by palm trees and other desert plants, there are NO suns, stars or planets visible in the movie still 35mm film".

I gave Flow a new prompt that it could use to edit the original image: "Add to this science fiction scene: in the foreground a tall slender young blond woman walking on the stone-paved path towards the front door of the mansion. The woman is seen from behind. The woman is dressed in a tight-fitting futuristic silver metallic jumpsuit that sparkles in the star light of this distant exoplanet. The entire body of the woman can be seen from her black boots to the top of her head." The new image that was generated by Flow is shown below in Figure 2a...

Figure 2a. New image generated by Google's Flow from the image shown in Figure 1.

Planet by Flow.

I made the mistake of mentioning in my text prompt that this scene is on an exoplanet. Google's free image generating software always wants to place big looming planets in the sky for any scene involving an exoplanet (see Figure 2a, above). I wonder if Flow could have found a more ugly way to arrange her hair. I don't know if their "pro" version of the image-generating software is any better than the free version that I have access to.

Humanoid
by Flow.

In my science fiction story "The Nanite Smuggler", Tyhry visits the home of Kasty the Yastyn on the planet Threy. That big empty house (Figure 1) seemed too empty. Here is the new editing prompt that I applied to the image in Figure 2a: "Change the woman's hair so that it falls naturally past her shoulders. Remove the looming ringed planet from the sky. Add a tall slender humanoid female inside the mansion in a room on the first floor. The humanoid female is looking out through the window at the blond woman as she approaches the mansion." The resulting image is shown below in Figure 2b...

Figure 2b. New image generated by Google's Flow from the image shown in Figure 2a.

Figure 3. Altered alien by Flow.

For me, it looks like this alien mansion has three floors. The humanoid alien that was generated by Flow appears to extend from the first floor to the second floor (Figure 2b, above).

I tried to correct the size of the alien and alter its appearance with the following new editing prompt: "Reduce the size of the humanoid female inside the house to half the height. Give the humanoid female long wavy black hair, long pointed ears that protrude through the hair on her head and very large glowing alien eyes." The resulting new image is shown in Figure 3.

For the new image in Figure 3, Flow was able to put hair on the head of the alien and give her long ears and glowing eyes, but she appears to be only slightly shorter than what was originally generated in Figure 2b.

Figure 4. The Astra Lounge by Flow.

I tried once more with a simple editing prompt: "Reduce the height of the humanoid female to half of the current size." The resulting image is shown in Figure 4.

 Welcome to the Astra Lounge. Flow proved that it can shrink a woman, but Flow shrank the wrong woman (compare Figure 3 to Figure 4). Also, Flow spontaneously decided to add a sign that says "Astra Lounge". This kind of inability of Google's free version of the software to follow what seems like simple instructions is a source of frustration. These newly generated images were saved inside Flow's "ImageFX Creations" folder.

Figure 5. A 9/8/2025 Whisk project moved to Flow.

I also transferred my saved files from Whisk to Flow and they were added in to the displayed list of Flow "projects" (going back to December 2025, see Figure 5), with the oldest successfully transferred Whisk-generated files shown as being from May of 2025. It seems as if I did not recover my oldest Whisk files which were created in January of 2025.

The transferred Whisk → Flow files include the Whisk-generated videos (see Figure 6).

Figure 6. A Whisk video now in Flow.

 Extend. For the old Whisk-generated videos, the available options in Flow are shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Video options for Flow.

When some of the Whisk-generated images are re-opened in Google's Flow, the images do not always appear to have been correctly re-proportioned (see Figure 8).

I had Flow make an edit to the Whisk-generated image that is shown below in Figure 8. The text prompt for the edit was: "Add some lens flare centered on the white core of the alien creature." The new image generated by Flow is shown below in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Made by Flow from Figure 8.

Figure 8. A Whisk-generated image displayed by Google's Flow in two different ways. Also visible is the prompt ↑.

 No, I don't care if Figure 8 (below ↓) is after Figure 9 (← to the left) on this page. I wanted Figure 8 to be displayed at a large size so that the old Whisk text prompt can be seen in Figure 8.

I tried to get Flow to make a short video clip with the pink alien wrapping its tentacles around the woman....

There are two different short Flow-generated video clips in the video shown above. Those two video clips were combined with the "lens flare" still image from Figure 9 (see above on this page), all packaged with some stock audio by Apple's iMovie into a 25 second video. She says, “Let’s try to establish a synapex connection.”

Left image rejected by Flow.

Sometimes Goggle's Flow fails to generate images. Sometimes Flow claims that a reference image depicts a real world person. Sometimes Flow warns that the topic of the image is too racy for Google. In the image shown to the right, I had an AI-generated image that was made by WOMBO Dream and I tried to use that image as a reference image with Flow, but Flow claimed that the AI-generated woman was someone famous and the image was rejected. I was able to uploaded the Flow-rejected image to Gemini and have Gemini alter the face. Then I was able to upload that new Gemini-generated image to Flow. A "failed to generate" message ↓ is shown in Figure 10, below...

Figure 10. Failed image generation with Google's Flow (third panel on right).

As shown above in Figure 10, Google's Flow is unable to generate a sensible depiction of outer space. Text prompt: "A science fiction scene showing a beautiful humanoid female with long brown hair, large alien eyes and large pointed ears seated inside a futuristic and luxurious cabin of an interstellar spaceship in the far future."

According to Google's blog: "To streamline your workflow, the best capabilities from our image generation experiments — Whisk and ImageFX — are moving directly into Flow, so you can now generate, edit and animate everything in one unified workspace." With ImageFX, I never ran into an upper limit on the length of text prompts. When I asked the Google Search AI if Flow has a limit, it suggested 480 tokens, based on documentation for a different image-generating model than Nano Banana.

Figure 11. A comic book
image by Google's Flow.
Click image to enlarge.

To test Google's Flow, I tried an approximately 400 word-long text prompt (over 2,400 characters): "A page from a 1950s full color comic book introducing readers to several types of artificial life-forms in the comic titled “The Huaoshy Reality”. A billion years or so in the past, in the First Reality, the pek had arrived in Earth's galaxy and discovered that the Phari had the most advanced civilization in the galaxy. The pek tried to work with the Phari, but the Phari could not abide how the pek forced each habitable planet in the galaxy to evolve a humanoid species that was expected to transcend its biological existence and eventually reside inside the Sedron Domain as an artificial life-form. The Phari had their own on-going project of enticing biological intelligences to transcend into the Hierion Domain. Unable to successfully compete with the pek in Hadron Domain, the Phari gave up on the Hadron Domain entirely and retreated into the Hierion Domain of the universe, where they continued to live as artificial life-forms composed of femtobots. The Phari became masters of the Hierion Domain and hierion-based technologies and tried to ignore the pek. Later, when the bumpha came on the scene as the Huaoshy's second type of agent in the Hadron Domain, the Phari extended their deep distrust of the pek to the bumpha as well — viewing both as intruders in the galaxy that the Phari believed was rightfully theirs. Sometimes the Phari altered the course of events on Earth, seemingly just to annoy the pek and the bumpha.

Figure 12. A comic book
image by Google's Flow.
Click image to enlarge.

The pek are one of the two types of artificial life-forms used by the Huaoshy to help develop humanoid species; more conservative than the bumpha.
The Phari are the most ancient humanoid species from Earth’s galaxy. The Phari transcended their biological existence and now reside in the Hierion Domain as artificial life-forms. The Phari are masters of hierion-based technologies. 
The bumpha are one of the two types of artificial life-forms used by the Huaoshy to help develop humanoid species, guiding them towards transcendence into the Sedron Domain. The bumpha specialize in Interventionism, secretly altering the course of development of species like humans.
The Huaoshy are the most technologically advanced form of life in the universe. After the Time Travel War, the Huaoshy altered the Dimensional Structure of the universe so as to prevent further time travel by positronic robots. The Huaoshy never leave the Sedron Domain. The Huaoshy created the pek and the bumpha to function as their agents in the Hadron Domain." As shown in Figures 11 and 12, Flow had no problem incorporating this rather long text prompt into pages of a comic book (click on the two images to enlarge and read the test in the comic panels).

Figure 13. A comic book
image by Google's Flow

  How long is too long? For my next test of Google's Flow with an even longer text prompt I used a 1,400 word long block of text taken from the first scene (on the planet Threy) of the science fiction story "The Nanite Smuggler". This longer text prompt is shown below in blue text...

A page from a 1950s full color comic book introducing readers the characters Tyhry, Marda, Rylla, Eddy, Zeta, Manny and Systolina in the comic titled “The Planet Threy”. Entry into the Asimov Reality by using the Reality Simulation System was like walking through a narrow doorway. Tyhry and Marda, hand in hand, went through first, arriving inside a simulation of the planet Threy. Tyhry and Marda both reacted with delight when they arrived on a small hill over-looking the tourist resort. This part of Threy was located in a region of the planet with lush forests, crystal-clear lakes, and towering mountains in the distance.

Figure 14. Resort on the planet Threy.
Image generated by Google's Flow

 Next, Marda's mother, Rylla Onway, popped through the entry gate of the Simulation System and arrived on Threy. Rylla, a tall and athletic woman who had been a long distance runner for decades, took a deep breath of the Threy air, fragrant with the resins of alien trees that looked like Earthly hemlock. She reached her arms out to bask in the warm rays of Threy's sun.

Lastly, Zeta Gohrlay and her husband Eddy arrived. Eddy, the father of Tyhry, glanced around at the scenery and then told Tyhry, "I can see why you wanted to visit this world and stay at this resort. This region of the planet reminds me of Kings Canyon." It was mid-afternoon and light from the brilliant white star of Threy reflected off the glittering snow-capped peaks that rose high in the distance above a sea of green hills.

Figure 15. A hike on the planet Threy.
Image generated by Google's Flow

 The five vacationers strolled down the hillside, walking on a type of alien plant life that looked like a cross between Earthly grass and moss. The checked into the resort hotel and then they visited the swimming pool, all of them dressed in swimsuits. Rylla immediately dove into the warm water of the pool and began swimming laps. The other visitors from Earth sat at the edge of the pool. They were watching Rylla and the other swimmers while they devoted a small amount of attention to the task of making plans for their first full day on Threy.

There was much discussion of random topics and consumption of many beverages made for them by the robotic staff of the resort and served in the form of colorful frozen concoctions in tall, thin glasses.

Figure 16a. Pool on the planet Threy, version 1.
Image generated by Google's Flow.
Click on the image to enlarge it.

 Tyhry was gazing at her father's face and contemplating the droop on the skin below his jaw line. Both Zeta and Eddy were over eighty, although a combination of good genes and medical nanites made them look far younger. Still, Tyhry worried about their advanced age. Tyhry was barely listening as Eddy told one of his favorite stories about meeting a robot on the planet Triskelion named Dani. Tyhry had heard this story dozens of times and she was feeling a bit bored.

Under Zeta's guidance, the conversation kept returning to the question of what they should do the next day and what popular tourist sites were to be found on Threy. Marda was keeping particularly close eye on her mother and now she said, “Who is that robot with mom?”

Figure 16b. Pool on the planet Threy, version 2.
Image generated by Google's Flow.
Click on the image to enlarge it.

 Tyhry visually searched the rather crowded swimming pool and located Rylla who was standing at the edge of the pool and speaking to a robot. The robots were easy to spot. They were basically human in appearance, but their artificial body surface was composed a silvery metallic substance that glinted in the sunlight. Tyhry watched Rylla climb out of the pool. “She's done swimming.”

Marda noted, “She's bringing the robot over here.”

Figure 17. Systolina the robot serving drinks.
Image generated by Google's Flow.
Click on the image to enlarge it.

 Rylla had finished her laps and now joined the others sitting by the pool. She said, “This is Systolina Kayto.”

Zeta performed introductions and then Systolina asked, “You are all from Earth? We don't get many visitors from the great Home World.”

Eddy said, “We are here for fun... to celebrate the recent college graduations of Marda and Tyhry.”

Figure 18. A resort guest asking a robot
for a drink. Image generated by Google's Flow.
Click on the image to enlarge it.

 Systolina exclaimed, “How nice! I hope you will all enjoy the natural wonders of Threy.”

Rylla explained, “Systolina is a nature guide for the resort.”

Systolina added, “I'd be thrilled to serve as your guide and escort during your mis... vacation on Threy.” The robot was gazing intently at Tyhry and Systolina asked, “Is there some special place you want to visit?”

Figure 19. A resort guest learning from a robot
about a hike. Image generated by Google's Flow

 Now everyone looked at Tyhry who squirmed under their gaze. After a long awkward silence, finally she told Zeta, “I was planned to surprise you with a gift, but I'll say this... it is the next step up from those medical nanites that Manny gave you.”

Rylla told Zeta, “You do look wonderful, mom. Maybe I should ask Manny for some of her magical medical nanites... I'll turn 45 next month and I'm already getting wrinkles on my wrinkles.”

Figure 20a. Version 1: Eddy asking the two robots,
Systolina Kayto and Dyas Totus for information
about a hike. Image generated by Google's Flow

 Zeta giggled. She was quite pleased by the age-reversing effects of the medical nanites that now swarmed through the tissues of her body. Zeta was mid-eighties, but she looked like a vigorous middle-aged woman. Zeta told Rylla, “Your problem is that you just spend too much time in the sun.”

Systolina sat down at the pool-side table with the five visitors from Earth. Responding to questions,  Systolina described some of the nearby tourist hot-spots such as the Anyatal hot springs.

Figure 20b. Version 2: Eddy asking the two robots,
Systolina Kayto and Dyas Totus for information
about a hike. Image generated by Google's Flow

 In the end, the three older visitors from Earth deferred to Tyhry and Marda since this family vacation was meant to celebrate their recent graduations. Tyhry finally suggested that they all go hiking in the mountains and start before sunup the next day so that they would have time to reach the top of Mt. Glisten. No better idea was offered and Marda gave a secret wink to Tyhry. So far, their plan was unfolding as expected.

As mind clones, Tyhry and Marda shared a telepathic connection. Now, Marda telepathically told Tyhry: No sign of Manny.

Tyhry reflected on the happy fact that someone was distracting Manny. For the past two months, Manny had been busy as a beaver, trying to round up all of those alien nanite samples. Manny took very seriously the task of controlling the availability of nanotechnology on Earth. Tyhry had seen very little of Manny during those past two months. Tyhry telepathically told Marda: All we need is one more day without Manny.

Figure 21. Marda and Tyhry with alien
nanites. Image generated by Google's Flow

 Systolina was once again looking intently at Tyhry, the robots eyes seemingly searching through Tyhry's tangled mop of long golden hair. “Fair-skinned visitors to Threy must take special care. Our sun emits large amounts of U.V. radiation.” Systolina said to Tyhry, “You are the fairest one of all, so I'm surprised you are not using a sun screen.”

Tyhry said jokingly to Marda, “Just my luck, now I get a robot mother to nag me on my vacation.”

Zeta told her daughter, “I think you should take Systolina's advice.” She moved her arm in a sweeping arc. “This is all a simulation, but you can still get burned.”

Tyhry nodded. “Yes, mother.”

Systolina added, “I can run over to the shop and get you a tube of sun screen.”

Tyhry said, “No, robomother, please don't bother. Nobody believes it, but I can take care of myself. I use nanites to protect myself.”

Systolina seemed surprised. “I always think of Earth a bastion of conservative forces, not a high-tech world like Triskelion. What does a youngster like you, from Earth, know about nanotechnology?”

”I know plenty, granny.” Tyhry immediately regretted her snarky use of the term  'granny' to refer to the robot, but she was defensive about her age and the lack of respect that she got from her elders. “I've had training in nanite programming from Manny the bumpha.”

Figure 22a. Systolina and Tyhry with alien
nanites. Image generated by Google's Flow

 Systolina asked, “What is a 'bumpha'?” The Reality Simulation System was programmed to automatically translate between languages for anyone using a Simulation of a past Reality. The translation worked both ways. But Systolina had never heard of the alien bumpha.

Systolina said, “Technicians from Triskelion recently obtained some antigravity nanites from the Yastyn. Now those special nanites are used in the transport pods, allowing them to hover above the ground. Tomorrow, we'll use some transport pods to carry supplies to Mt. Glisten.”

Eddy said, “Amazing. Nanite technicians from Triskelion... I had no idea...” Now Eddy was gazing intently at his daughter. Eddy imagined that he could guess why she had selected Threy for a vacation destination. It had nothing to do with the natural beauty of the planet.

Figure 22b. Systolina and Tyhry with alien
nanites. Image generated by Google's Flow

As shown above in Figure 13, Flow was able to process my 1,400 word-long text prompt. I had Flow make two versions of the comic book page and the second one took about twice as long to render and had a somewhat different format (see here for a full scale version). I took some of the illustrations from that comic book page and had Flow use them as reference images for the generation of less cartoonish versions. Figure 14 (above) is view of the resort; I cropped out a 1950s era car that was on the road. Flow invented a scene with people in swimsuits walking down the hillside (see Figure 15). 

Figure 23. Reference image used for making
Figure 20. (the names were added later)

Shown above in Figure 16a and Figure 16b are two versions of a pool scene. In Figure 16b Flow gave the robot in the foreground a lot to carry. Since my text prompt included the word "exoplanet", Flow filled the sky with absurd fantasy astronomical clutter. Flow had trouble crafting sensible captions for some of the cartoon panels. The AI-generated caption text (seen here) for the panel shown in Figure 17 was, "Marda was keeping topics and colorful frozen concoctions the resort". For Figure 18, I had to make Flow edit the original image so that the blond woman was shown with a glass in her hand, asking the robot for a refill. 

I was favorable impressed by the image that is shown in Figure 19 because my text prompt included, "The robot is explaining to the woman that she can serve as a guide for a hike in the nearby mountains," and Flow generated what looks like a holographic map of the mountains.

Figure 24. Reference image used to generate Figure 21.

 Two robots are better than one. Flow spontaneously generated an image with two robots seated at the table (see Figure 23, above). Figure 20a and Figure 20b show two versions of the same scene. In Figure 20b Tyhry has seemingly wandered away, maybe to make arrangements to meet Kasty the Yastyn. For the image that is shown in Figure 21, I had Flow modify a rather generic image of two women seated at a table (see the image in Figure 24, to the right). The nanite cloud was added manually by me. As shown in Figure 22a, Flow has a thing for ugly hair styles. Figure 22b is better, but it almost looks like Earth's moon there in the sky of Threy. 

Flow confusion.

Hit or Miss. Google's Flow did not reject my 1,400 word-long text prompt (over 8,000 characters), but it displayed obviously poorer performance in using that longer prompt to make a comic. For example, as seen here, Flow sometimes depicted Tyhry as a boy named 'Tuhry'. As shown in the image to the left, one panel in the comic showed Eddy saying, "I knew you'd like it, Dad!" The other comic page that was generated for the 1,400 word-long prompt 1) was rendered in half the time that was taken for the other version, 2) stayed closer to the prompt, 3) included one third as many images and 4) was significantly more coherent. I conclude that very long text prompts are risky, but so far I have not found an actual enforced upper limit for the length of prompts with Flow.

Figure 25a. Image generated by Google's Flow.

 Working with Flow to illustrate science fiction stories. I've had fun with the idea that the Phari are so technologically advanced that they can teleport entire planets over long distances. I asked Google's Flow to generate: "A photo-realistic science fiction movie still showing an exoplanet being teleported. The habitable exoplanet is shown only half re-materialized after being transported to a new star system. Half of the planet is missing and stars from the background star field are visible where the planet has not yet materialized. Some of the planet's molten interior is visible."

Figure 25b. Image generated by Google's Flow.

The Flow-generated image in Figure 25a is not horrible. I suppose Flow felt that there should be a giant space station that is "beaming the planet in" to its new location. The Flow-generated image in Figure 25b doubled down and has two spacecraft. I suppose Flow can't stand the idea of Earth without spaceships hovering nearby. 

I decided to focus my edits on the image in Figure 25b because it did not have the cloudy blue outline of the half of the planet that is still materializing.

Figure 26. Image generated by Google's Flow.

 Editing images with Flow. I suppose Flow did not believe that teleporting a planet is cool enough, so it added other features to the image that I then had to remove by editing. I asked Flow to remove the Sun, the spaceships and the nebulae from the image in Figure 25b. The new edited image is shown in Figure 26.

 Just keep editing. Next, I asked Flow to edit the image that is shown in Figure 26 so as to remove the galaxies and simply use a normal star-field in the background. Also, I asked Flow to NOT use Earth's continents, since this is an exoplanet.

Figure 27. Image generated by Google's Flow.

The next Flow-edited version of this planetary teleportation scene is shown in Figure 27. After some effort, I was fairly satisfied with the version of the scene that is shown in Figure 27. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Lava on surface?

As usual, I reached the point where I did not have the patience to keep working with Flow. In Figure 27 it looks like there are places where molten lava has escaped to the planet's surface after teleportation, but I called it quits. Minor imperfections in AI-generated images can be photoshopped faster than trying to get the AI to fix the image problems. 

I had Gemini generate a song about the demise of ImageFX and Whisk and I built the song into a six minute-long video (see below)...

Whisk early release. Click image to enlarge.

I suspect that the reason why my older Whisk-generated files were not transferred to Flow is that I was initially part of testing an "early release" of Whisk. Possible none of those "early release" images were saved by Google. Some of my older Whisk-generated images that did not get transferred to Flow can be seen on these blog pages: "Back in Time", "Back Track", "Hair Nanites", "What is Library?"

See: Whisk-generated videos on YouTube. Google Flow-generated videos on YouTube. A music video playlist on Youtube. See another music video with images that were generated by Flow.

Next: a re-evaluation of the backstory for "Battlefield Lipid".

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