Midjourney 101

As of 13 February 2023

Download Discord then go to the Midjourney website and sign up. 

You will be generating all your images with Midjourney on their Discord community.

You will get some time to play with a few images in an MJ discord channel called Newbies then you will need to make a decision on whether or not to subscribe.

Subscription

Basic $10

 +- 200 images

Standard $30

 15 hours and access to Relax mode

Pro $60 

30 hours, access to Relax mode and Stealth mode.

Personally, my advice is not to waste your time with the basic plan as you will use the time up in a day or two and the incremental billing is expensive. I spent $100 in my first month with MidJourney because I opted for the basic plan. That buy button is far too easy to press.

On the standard plan, you get something called “relax mode”. Once you have finished your fast hours you can turn on relax mode and keep generating without paying extra.

Remember every prompt and image you create is published on the Midjourney website feed and made public in your Midjourney gallery. If you want your work privately you need to pay an extra $20 a month for stealth mode or get the Pro subscription and you get double the hours and stealth mode included.

.Understand what you are agreeing to and read the terms and conditions

Prompting Time

I am going to focus on the latest and most advanced version of V4 which is our default.

This is what your settings will look like, you can access them by typing /settings into your chat.

At the top are some of the different versions of MJ. You will want to make sure it’s on V4. 

Then you have the quality of the image. If you use this your generating time on the server is longer so it costs more in minutes. This setting isn't currently working so make sure you are just on default Base Quality. 

Then you have how stylized you want the image.  Midjourney has its own default style. You could say this is how hard you are gripping MJ’s pencil.

Upscaling is the type of upscale you want. You upscale an image to enhance it and make it bigger instead of for example a thumbnail.

 If you pay for Private you can select Private so that your images are only seen by you. 

Then you have Remix mode I leave this on so that I can always remix. It is very important you check this setting. 

And then you have Fast and Relax mode. In Fast mode you get an number of hours every month once that runs out you switch to Relax which is slightly slower. Or you can buy Fast hours. If you are on the Basic plan then you won’t have access to relax mode.

Some of these settings you can specify in a prompt

For example;— v 3 which is the parameter for version 3 of Midjourney.

I will be doing a post on parameters at a later date.

Tips On Crafting Your Prompt

• Be specific and don't waste your words.

• You need to think about-

1. Lighting
2. Mood
3. Art style
4. Medium
5. Subject
6. Angle
7. Color
8. And more....

• Prompting is ‘say what you see’ or at least what you want to see. If you want detail then add the word ‘detailed’ to the prompt

• The closer the word to the beginning of the prompt the more power it has.

• Make sure you have an idea of what each word does in a prompt. This may differ to what it does in the real world.

• Midjourney does have some language learning so write as if you are writing to a teacher. Within reason, no need for please and thank you.

• Start at the beginning then build.

Let’s Build A Prompt

/imagine prompt: kraken  — v 4

Now it's time for lights, camera, action!

Let’s add some lighting first.

/imagine prompt: kraken. daylight   — v 4

Ok I will warn you Midjourney is leans toward darker lighting so you have to bring a good light game, let’s turn the volume up shall we?

/imagine prompt: kraken. bright daylight –v 4

That’s better. 

Next, let’s look at style 

/imagine prompt: kraken. bright daylight, fantasy art   — v 4

(Warning often when you use the word “art” you will get pictures on walls or in frames the AI is just being literal.) 

Now we are getting somewhere. Let’s add color now.

/imagine prompt: kraken, bright daylight, full color, fantasy art –v 4

Now there are lots of art movements you can choose from in style but you may need to do research. It’s pretty but kind of boring so let’s add some details to the setting. 

/imagine prompt: vicious kraken destroying the nautilus, bright daylight, full color, fantasy art, squall   — v 4

One more thing just to give it a little extra oomph,

/imagine prompt: vicious kraken destroying the nautilus, bright daylight, full color, fantasy art, squall --ar 16:9   — v 4

Yes, that’s correct aspect ratio! This is 16x9 there are lots of other aspect ratios available, but I lean toward general screen and picture sizes. Ok since you’re still reading this let’s do one more little tweak. What if we had tried a different style? 

/imagine prompt: vicious kraken destroying the nautilus, bright daylight, full color, postage stamp, squall --ar 3:4  — v 4  

Remember to keep an open mind, there is so much you can do with this technology the possibilities are endless. Leave reality behind, forget all the conventional rules, stop limiting yourself and just experiment. Now you just choose which you like better and press U1 or U2 or U3 or U4 depending on which corresponds to which image. I am going with U1

And there we are at the end of our Midjourney for today. So yes you can just type “something” in and press a button or you can RELEASE THE KRAKEN!