“It’s not that you’re not good enough, it’s just that we can make you better.”
So sang Tears for Fears, and the line came to mind as the recently announced PhotaLabs promised to show “your reality, but made more magical.” That is, they create the shots you just missed, or wish you’d have taken:
Honestly, my first reaction was “ick.” I know that human memory is famously untrustworthy, and photos can manipulate it—not even through editing, but just through selective capture & curation. Even so, this kind of retroactive capture seems potentially deranging. Here’s the date you wish you’d gone on; here’s the college experience you wish you’d had.
I’m reminded of the Nathaniel Hawthorne quote featured on the Sopranos:
No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
Like, at what point did you take these awkward sibling portraits…?
We all need an awkward ’90s holiday photoshoot with our siblings.
If you missed the boat (like I did), you’re in luck – I wrote some prompts you can use with Nano Banana Pro
Upload a photo of each person and then use the following:
“An awkward vintage 1990s studio… pic.twitter.com/LDbl2aQFPp
— Justine Moore (@venturetwins) December 24, 2025
And, hey, darn if I can resist the devil’s candy: I wasn’t able to capture a shot of my sons together with their dates, so off I went to a combo of Gemini & Ideogram. I honestly kinda love the results, and so down the cognitive rabbit hole I slide… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
x
Modern day horror story where you look though the photo albums of you as a kid and realize all the pictures have this symbol in the corner pic.twitter.com/dHnUrUJs0r
— gabe (@allgarbled) December 21, 2025