What is the Ghibli style, and why is everyone making these?
Studio Ghibli is the Japanese animation studio behind My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle. Its films look hand-painted because the backgrounds were: watercolour skies, deep green hillsides, and light that feels like a slow summer afternoon. The characters are drawn simply, with big expressive eyes and very few lines.
In March 2025, ChatGPT learned to edit photos, and people started asking it to redraw their selfies in that style. Within a week, Ghibli versions of family photos, weddings and pets were all over Instagram, X and WhatsApp. The trend never really went away. People still search for it every day, mostly to make a profile picture or a present for someone.
This app paints the same kind of picture from your own photo. It doesn't use any film's characters or scenes; it redraws your photo with the soft colours, simple faces and calm backgrounds the style is known for. PixelShine has no connection to Studio Ghibli. "Ghibli style" is simply the name everyone uses for the look.
What does the Ghibli filter change in your photo?
Three things change, and one thing stays the same.
The background becomes a painting
Skies turn to soft watercolour, walls and trees get visible brush texture, and the light warms up. A plain grey wall won't turn into a meadow by itself, but the app fills empty space with a few flowers and small details.
Your face is simplified, not replaced
Your features are drawn with fewer lines: brighter eyes, a smaller nose, gentle shading. The goal is that friends recognise you at a glance, the way they would in a good caricature.
The colours get warmer and calmer
Harsh phone colours become the muted greens, blues and creams of the films. Night photos come out as evening scenes rather than dark ones.
What stays: your pose, hair and clothes
The layout of your photo is kept. If you're holding a coffee cup, you're still holding it. If your hair is curly, it stays curly.
Which options should you pick?
There are two settings above the Generate button. Both start on Auto, which suits most photos, so you only need them when the first result isn't what you pictured.
Framing: Head & shoulders
Crops in close. It's the best choice for profile pictures, because your face fills the frame and still reads at a tiny size.
Framing: Half body
Waist up. A good middle ground when your top, or whatever you're holding, is part of the story.
Framing: Full body
Shows all of you and much more background. Use it for travel photos and wallpapers, where the scenery matters as much as you do.
Strength: Subtle
Stays nearer your photo: more of your real proportions, a lighter coat of paint. Pick it when the strong version stops looking like you.
Strength: Strong
Goes fully into the hand-painted look, with simpler features and a more painterly world around you. Best for wallpapers and prints.
Below those you can change the model and the shape. Nano Banana Pro, the default, is the best at keeping a face recognisable. Choose 1:1 for a profile picture, 4:5 for an Instagram post, and 9:16 for a phone wallpaper.
How do you make a Ghibli profile picture that works?
A profile picture is shown as a small circle, often no bigger than a thumbnail, so what matters is that your face reads at that size. Start from a photo where your face takes up at least a third of the frame, set Framing to Head & shoulders and the shape to 1:1, and leave Strength on Auto.
Before you upload the result, look at it shrunk down on your phone. If your eyes and smile still read clearly, it will work on WhatsApp, Instagram and LinkedIn alike. If the background is busy, the circle crop will cut most of it away anyway, so a plain sky behind you is no loss. Many people make two: a close one for the profile picture and a Full body one for a cover photo or wallpaper.
How do you get the best Ghibli result?
- Use a photo where your face is lit from the front. Hard shadows across the face become odd painted patches.
- Outdoor photos make the best scenes. Sky, trees and water are what this style paints best; a bare wall gives it little to work with.
- Take off sunglasses and keep hands away from your face. The app has to guess what's hidden, and guessing is where likeness slips.
- One to three people works best. In a group of six, each face is tiny and gets simplified a lot.
- If the result is close but not quite you, set Strength to Subtle and try again before you change the photo.
- Press Use as input to run a second pass on your result, for example to change the framing, without uploading again.
What can't it do well yet?
It's good at what it does, but it isn't magic. These are the cases where you'll want a second try, or a different photo.
- An exact likeness. It's a drawing, so small things such as a scar or the exact shape of your eyebrows can be smoothed away.
- Text and logos. Writing on a T-shirt or a shop sign usually comes out as squiggles. If the words matter, add them afterwards in the free photo editor.
- Hands in awkward poses. Fingers sometimes merge or multiply. Run it again, or pick Head & shoulders so the hands are out of frame.
- Very small faces. In a wide landscape where you're a dot, you may be painted as a generic figure. Crop the photo tighter first.
- The films' characters. It won't add Totoro or No-Face to your picture. It paints the style, not the studio's characters.
What do people make with it?
Profile pictures
The most common use by far. A Ghibli-style avatar stands out in a list of ordinary photos and still looks like you.
Phone wallpapers
Pick 9:16 and Full body with a scenic photo. Holiday shots by the sea or in the hills come out especially well.
Presents and prints
Couples turn a favourite trip photo into a print; families do it with a picture of their grandparents. For anything bigger than A4, run the result through the image upscaler first.
Pet portraits
The app is tuned for people, so a pet on its own is hit and miss. A photo of you holding your pet usually works better than the pet alone.
Invitations and cards
A painted photo of the couple or the birthday person makes a simple invitation look made to order.
Can you make a Ghibli picture in ChatGPT or Gemini instead?
Yes. Both can redraw a photo if you upload it and describe the style. The catch is that you have to write the prompt yourself, results swing a lot with the wording, and the free plans limit how many images you can make in a day.
If you want to write your own, this prompt works in ChatGPT, Gemini, or our AI photo editor: "Redraw this photo as a hand-painted Japanese animated film scene: soft watercolour sky, warm afternoon light, simple expressive faces, lush greenery. Keep the person recognisable and keep their pose and clothes."
This app has a longer version of that prompt built in, tuned to keep faces recognisable, so all you do is upload and press Generate. For more trend ideas, see our AI photo effects guides.
What happens to the photos you upload?
Your photo is sent to our image-model partner, fal.ai, to make the picture, and to no one else. It isn't used to train AI models and it's never sold. You keep full ownership of the photo you upload and the picture you download.
The pictures you make are saved in My Creations in your account, so you can download them again later. You can delete any of them there at any time, or ask us to delete your account and everything in it.
