Migrate to Imagen 3

This guide shows you how to migrate your applications from earlier versions of Imagen to Imagen 3. This guide covers the following topics:

  • Why migrate?: Learn about the benefits of Imagen 3 and the deprecation timeline for older models.
  • Choose a migration model: Determine the best Imagen 3 model for your workload.
  • Migration steps: Find specific instructions for migrating based on your current features, such as image editing or personalization.
  • Pricing changes: Review the pricing for the new models.

The following diagram summarizes the overall migration workflow:

Why migrate to Imagen 3?

Migrating to Imagen 3 provides the following benefits:

  • Avoid service disruption due to deprecation: Starting on June 24, 2025, Imagen versions 1 and 2, Image Captioning, and Visual Question Answering are deprecated. The imagegeneration@002, imagegeneration@005, and imagegeneration@006 models will be removed on September 24, 2025 .
  • Improved performance: Imagen 3 offers performance improvements over Imagen 1 and Imagen 2.
  • Minimal migration effort: For most Imagen applications, you can upgrade to Imagen 3 without significant changes to your prompts or code. However, some applications might require prompt changes. To verify the output, test your prompts with Imagen 3.

Which Imagen 3 model should I migrate to?

The Imagen 3 model you should migrate to depends on your current Imagen workload.

The following table provides a high-level comparison to help you choose a model.

Model Description Use Case
imagen-3.0-generate-002 A streamlined model for high-quality, general-purpose image generation. Choose this model for basic image generation workloads that don't require advanced editing or customization features.
imagen-3.0-capability-001 A comprehensive model that supports advanced features like inpainting, outpainting, and subject/style customization. Choose this model if you use features like mask-based editing, personalization, or product image editing.

The following table shows common workloads for Imagen 1 and Imagen 2 models and their support by Imagen 3 models:

Feature imagegeneration@002 imagegeneration@005 imagegeneration@006 imagen-3.0-
capability-001 generate-002
Image generation Yes Yes Yes No Yes
Digital watermarking and verification Yes Yes Yes No Yes
User-configurable safety settings No No Yes Yes Yes
Image customization No No Yes Yes No
Subject customization for product, person, and animal companion Yes No No Yes No
Style customization Yes No No Yes No
Mask-based image editing Yes No No Yes No
Mask-free image editing Yes No No No No
Insertion or removal image editing (inpainting) No No Yes Yes No
Outpainting No No Yes Yes No
Product image editing Yes No Yes Yes No
Upscaling Yes No No No No
Negative prompts Yes Yes Yes Yes No
Person generation No No Yes No Yes
Non-English text prompting No No Yes Yes Yes

How to migrate

In most cases, you can migrate by updating the model name you are using to an Imagen 3 model, with no other changes to your parameters. The following sections describe exceptions that might affect you.

Image Captioning and Visual Question Answering

If you use the Image Captioning and Visual Question Answering features in Imagen, migrate to Gemini Image Understanding. This service offers improved capabilities for analyzing and describing images.

For more information, see Image understanding.

Inpainting, outpainting, and product editing

Inpainting, outpainting, and product editing require API changes when migrating to Imagen 3 models. For more information, see the following:

Personalization

For avatar stylization, migrate from Imagen 2 Personalization to Imagen 3's Subject customization, which provides improved capabilities.

Pricing changes

Upgrading from earlier Imagen models might result in pricing changes.

For pricing information, see the following pages: