A Ghibli filter turns an ordinary photo into a soft, hand-painted anime scene: a watercolor sky with tall clouds, warm light and simple, gentle faces. In practice, you get it by attaching a photo to an AI image tool and describing the style in words. Toybox AI offers two routes: Smart Editor, a Pro plan tool that repaints your photo from a sentence you type, and Sketch to Life, whose Ghibli look paints over a drawing. ChatGPT and Gemini steps are further down. Toybox isn't affiliated with Studio Ghibli.
What you can make with a Ghibli filter
The look suits everyday subjects: people at home, pets, gardens, small towns. Each item below pairs a subject with the setting that suits it.
- A profile picture. Head and shoulders with a painted sky behind you. Pick the Square shape so a round crop doesn't cut off your chin.
- A pet portrait. A dog asleep on a porch or a cat on a windowsill. Name the markings to keep, like a white chest patch or one floppy ear.
- A couple or anniversary picture. Two people from one photo, repainted on a hilltop or a rainy street. Both people need to be in the same photo, because Smart Editor edits one image per run.
- Your house as a storybook cottage. Porches, gardens and front doors take the look well. Ask for more sky, climbing flowers and a bicycle by the fence.
- Travel photos as painted landscapes. Coastlines, fields and old towns. Ask for the parking lot and the crowds to be left out, then check what replaced them.
- A child's drawing as a painting. Sketch to Life's Ghibli look ("A whimsical anime painting.") renders the drawing as a finished painted picture. The page on turning kids' drawings into real-life pictures covers the other looks.
- A still for a cozy video. A painted frame can become the first frame of a short clip. The Ghibli-style video prompts cover the motion side.
Words that make a photo look Ghibli-style
Describe the look in parts rather than leaning on a name. A bare name leaves the palette, light and faces up to chance, and naming a person can get a request turned down: OpenAI's March 2025 system card for ChatGPT's image generation described a refusal for prompts that ask for a living artist's style, and OpenAI told The Verge that month that broader studio looks are allowed. These are the parts to name:
| Part of the look | Words to use | Words to leave out |
|---|---|---|
| Background | hand-painted background, watercolor sky, tall summer clouds | photorealistic, HDR |
| People | soft cel shading, simple faces, thin outlines, gentle expressions | detailed skin texture, 3D render |
| Light | warm late-afternoon light, soft shadows, sunlight through leaves | harsh flash, neon |
| Color | muted greens, sky blue, warm cream highlights | oversaturated, high contrast |
| Everyday detail | laundry on a line, potted plants, a kettle, a bicycle | brand logos, film characters |
| Mood | quiet, a breeze moving the grass, rain on a window | epic battle, lens flare |
For a brand-new scene with no photo, a Ghibli-style image generator such as Image Generator accepts the same vocabulary as a text description, plus up to 3 reference photos.
Ghibli filter prompts for Smart Editor
Add your photo, then copy one of these instructions into "What should change?". Replace the hair, clothes and markings in each keep list with the ones in your picture. The library of Ghibli AI prompts has 14 more scenes, from a rainy bus stop to a countryside train.
Same scene, painted
Keeps the room or street and changes only the style. Start here for a first try.
Repaint this photo as a hand-painted anime illustration with a soft watercolor background, simple cel-shaded figures and warm late-afternoon light. Keep everyone in the same place and pose, with the same hair, glasses and clothing colors. Keep the room or street recognizable, only painted. No text or logos.Two people on a summer hill
Moves a couple from any photo to a new painted setting.
Repaint both people in this photo as hand-drawn anime characters sitting side by side on a grassy hilltop at golden hour, with a small town and the sea far below and tall white clouds overhead. Keep their faces, hairstyles, height difference and outfit colors recognizable. Soft cel shading, grass bending in the wind, calm mood.Dog on a sunny porch
Turn this photo of my dog into a Ghibli-inspired painting of him asleep on a sunny wooden porch, with potted geraniums, a tin watering can and a screen door behind him. Keep his brown and white coat pattern, his floppy left ear and his red collar. Fur painted in a few soft strokes, warm light, simple outlines.House as a storybook cottage
Repaint this photo of our house in a hand-painted anime style, as a storybook cottage on a quiet summer morning. Keep the same roof shape, windows, door color and front steps. Add climbing roses, a bicycle leaning on the fence and a wide blue sky with big white clouds. No people and no text.How to make Ghibli images in ChatGPT and Gemini
Both ChatGPT and the Gemini app can repaint a photo you attach, and as of September 2026 both have a free option with caps. The table of words above works in either one.
In ChatGPT
- Open ChatGPT on the web or in the iOS or Android app, and start a chat. You can also select More, then Images.
- Upload your photo and describe the change, for example "Repaint this photo as a hand-painted anime illustration with a watercolor sky. Keep my face, glasses and hair the same."
- Set the frame with the aspect ratio picker, or type a ratio such as 4:5 into the request.
- For a local fix, open the image, tap Select, highlight the area and say what should change there. OpenAI's help page warns that selections can be imprecise, so look over the whole picture again.
- Find the result later under Images in the sidebar, where ChatGPT saves every picture it makes, and use the image's controls to save it to your device.
OpenAI says a detailed image can take a few minutes. On a free account, image creation has its own cap, separate from chat, and ChatGPT tells you once it's used up.
The trend took off in late March 2025. OpenAI made its new 4o image generation the default image tool in ChatGPT on March 25, and two days later The Verge reported that couples, pet owners and families were turning their photos into Ghibli-style art.
In Gemini
- Sign in to the Gemini app with your Google Account, because image generation and editing need you signed in. Editing photos is for users 18 and older.
- Upload the photo and ask for the edit in one or two sentences, naming the style and what to keep.
- Hover over the result and choose "Download full size". Without a Google AI plan the file is 1K; with one, it's 2K.
Gemini counts images against a daily quota, so a long run of retries can use it up.
Tips for better Ghibli-style results
Use a photo lit from the front. The painted style boils a face down to a few lines, and shadowed or turned-away faces lose the details people recognize. Daylight from a window and no sunglasses give the edit the most to work with.
Name the traits that make the person recognizable. Round glasses, freckles and short bangs are concrete enough for the edit to preserve. A general request to keep the resemblance gives it nothing specific.
Crop big groups. With one to three people, each face stays large enough to paint in detail. In a photo of ten, crop to the few who matter most.
Decide on the setting. Say whether the real room stays, gets replaced, or gets more sky. Cars, screens and store signs rarely suit the look; ask for a garden, a porch or a window full of clouds instead.
Choose the shape before you edit. "Original" keeps your photo's proportions, "Square" suits a profile picture, and "Story" (9:16) suits a phone wallpaper or a vertical video frame. Picking a new shape redraws the whole scene, so look at the edges afterward.
Refine in small steps. Leave "Latest result" selected and ask for a single fix, such as "make the sky more orange". When the face has drifted, go back to "Original photo" with a stricter keep list.
Free and paid Ghibli filter options
You can use a Ghibli filter online in any phone or computer browser. Here is what each option costs as of September 2026:
| Route | Price | What goes in | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | No charge on the free tier, within its image cap; paid plans raise the cap | Your photo plus a sentence | Testing the look on one or two pictures |
| Gemini app | No charge, with a daily image cap; photo edits for ages 18 and up | Your photo plus a sentence | A quick phone-screen version (1K files without a plan) |
| Toybox Smart Editor | Pro and higher plans; 85 credits HD or 110 4K at current prices | One photo and an instruction, with follow-up edits on the newest version | 4K files, several rounds of fixes, five shapes |
| Toybox Sketch to Life | Free plan; 70 credits at current prices | One drawing, with the Ghibli look selected | Sketches and children's drawings |
Either Toybox route requires a free account, and a new account's 20 credits won't pay for an image. Plans and top-ups are listed on the pricing page.
What a Ghibli filter can't do
Faces can change. Each Smart Editor edit repaints the entire picture, and there is no brush or mask for shielding a face, so a result may stop resembling the person. Return to "Original photo" with a more specific keep list rather than stacking edits on a painting that has drifted.
Separate photos can't be merged. Smart Editor works on a single image at a time. For a painted scene with people who were photographed separately, use Image Generator and give it their photos as references (3 at most); the faces may come out a little different.
It won't recreate the films, and you shouldn't ask. Keep characters, creatures and logos from the films out of your prompts, and describe original subjects instead: your own pets, your street, the bakery on your corner. More vocabulary for original characters is on the AI anime art page.
Lettering comes out wrong. Shop signs and bus timetables are where misspellings show up. Request "no text", or limit it to one short quoted word and proofread it.
There's no cutout option. Every download is a full PNG scene, and Toybox has no transparent-background setting in any tool. If you want a sticker, strip the background afterward with a separate tool.
How to apply a Ghibli filter to a photo in Smart Editor
- Go to Smart Editor while signed in to a Pro or higher plan.
- Add the photo in the "Your image" slot (JPG or PNG, 10 MB at most).
- Paste an instruction from this page under "What should change?", with your own keep list.
- Expand "More options" to set the "Shape" ("Original" matches your photo) and the "Quality": HD at a current 85 credits, or 4K at 110.
- Press "Apply edit" and allow about 30 seconds.
- Look closely at the face and hands. Minor fixes go on "Latest result"; a fresh attempt starts from "Original photo".
- Keep it by downloading the PNG or saving it to your gallery, since an unsaved result is only kept for 24 hours.
A drawing goes to Sketch to Life instead: place it under "Your drawing", select the "Ghibli" look, then tap "Create image" (70 credits, Free plan). Its "More options" panel holds a "Shape" picker and a 500-character "Notes" field for lines like "keep the same layout, warm sunset light".