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If you have clicked on this article, chances are that you have already played around with Midjounrey. If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a brief intro:
What is Midjourney?
Midjourney is an AI program that can create pictures from written descriptions, like OpenAI’s DALL-E and Stable Diffusion. Users can make art with Midjourney by typing commands (called Prompts) on a Discord bot.
What is a Midjourney Prompt?
A Prompt refers to a brief text command that is interpreted by the Midjourney Bot in order to generate an image. The Bot divides the words and phrases in a prompt into smaller pieces known as tokens. These tokens are then compared to the Bot’s training data and used to create an image.
What is “Prompt Engineering�
In simple terms: It’s the creation of optimal inputs to create optimal outputs when using AI.
It’s not as easy as asking ChatGPT or Midjourney for something and getting what you want.
And that’s where great prompts enter the scene.
The artist of the future won’t be someone wielding a brush, but a person who can translate creative ideas into prompts that result in the desired outputs.
These artists are already working on prompts for clients and selling their best ones on marketplaces.
So, if you’re looking to improve your prompts, you can either buy prompts from prompt engineers or try to become a prompt engineer yourself. In the following paragraphs, I will show you how to quickly upgrade your Midjourney prompts.
Why Is Creating a Good AI Art Prompt on Midjourney Important?
Using Midjourney is not free.
New users have 20 free prompts available. When you have reached that limit you are asked to pay a monthly fee.
The Basic Plan offers a limited generation of around ~200 images per month for $10, while the Standard Plan costs $30 and offers unlimited image generation.
So, for beginners first using Midjourney, squandering the prompts can quickly become costly. Moreover, prompting takes time. The more you prompt without any aim, the more time you will waste
Knowing how to prompt efficiently, we’ll save you money and time. Plus, it will likely also allow you to earn money with your skill.
Table
How to write better Midjourney Prompts?
A basic Midjourney prompt can be a single word, phrase, or emoji:
If I am inputting the prompt “Kingfisherâ€, Midjpourney will create images of a Kingfisher Bird.
Sometimes that might be enough, but more often than not I want to add specific details to better express my vision.
Moreover, “very short prompts will rely heavily on Midjourney’s default style, so a more descriptive prompt is better for a unique look.â€
This can be done by adding:
- Image prompts: You can upload images as part of a prompt to influence an image’s composition, style, and colors.
- Text prompts: By adding details to the prompt with text commands, you can heavily influence the style of your images. Besides text, you could also use emojis.
- Parameters: Parameters change how an image is generated. With parameters, you can change aspect ratios, models, chaos, upscale, and more. They go at the end of the prompt.
Some say that the ideal prompt consists of 3 to 7 words, but there is no fixed rule for that.
Clarity is king when writing prompts. Try to be as clear as possible, and don’t include words that are not important for the overall idea.
As a rule of thumb: More specific words work better than less specific ones. For example, gigantic is a better choice than big.
The first words of the prompts should define the subject: This could be a person, animal, character, location, object, etc.
In our example case, we wrote the term “Kingfisherâ€.
After that, you can define the medium. Do you want to have a realistic photo, an oil painting, an illustration, or a marble sculpture?
For the following result, I have used the prompt “Kingfisher, Marble Sculptureâ€
Looks cool! For this article, I would want to go in a different direction and would rather create a more realistic image.
So, instead of marble sculpture, I would write National Geographic photo.
“Kingfisher, National Geographic Photoâ€
Doesn’t our Kingfisher look much cooler now?
We could now further define the environment. Possibilities for this are endless: in Middle-earth, Hogwarts, on Mars, underwater, indoors, outdoors, Wild West.
This is the result of the prompt:
“Kingfisher, National Geographic Photo, Underwaterâ€
In the case of our Kingfisher, the fact that the bird is diving underwater would be the main theme of this image. Therefore, we could write this fact at the beginning of the prompt to stress this detail a bit more:
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photoâ€
In the next step, we should add lightning as it can drastically enrich the impact of the image.
Again there are tons of commands you could try: Soft, ambient, overcast, neon, studio lights, disco lights, direct sunlight, etc.
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Disco light”
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light”
Additionally, you can add color prompts. For example specific colors like red, green, or yellow…
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, red”
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, green”
Or even change the overall color tone of the image with commands like vibrant, muted, bright, monochromatic, colorful, black and white, or pastel
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, black and white”
It can also be helpful to add moods or emotions like calm, loving, energetic and so on.
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, red, calm”
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, red, aggressive”
Lastly, specify the composition of the image. Portrait, headshot, closeup, birds-eye view, etc.
Midjourney also understands commands like 20, 5, 100 or 200 mm lens, and specific camera models like Sony α7 III, Nikon D850 DSLR 4k, Canon EOS R5, or Hasselblad.
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, red, aggressive, 100 mm lens”
You could even specify aperture settings for adding blurry backgrounds.
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, red, aggressive, Sony α7 III, F 1.2”
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, red, aggressive, Sony α7 III, F 1.2, headshot”
What about grammar and spelling?
Don’t care too much about those things because the Midjourney Bot does not understand grammar, sentence structure, or words like humans. It also doesn’t care about capitalization.
When communicating with the bot, try to be as clear as possible with your commands and use commas, brackets, and hyphens to organize your thoughts better.
Less is more: Fewer words mean each word has a more powerful influence.
Does the Prompt needs to be written in English?
No, you are free to use any language. Changing the language can of course alter the result.
Here is an example of the above prompt in German:
“Eisvogel taucht unter Wasser, National Geographic Photo, Sonnenuntergangslicht, blau, rot, aggressiv, Sony α7 III, F 1.2, Kopfaufnahme”
How to add Parameters
Finally, we can use parameters to further individualize the image.
Aspect Ratio
Aspect Ratios can be defined by inputting –aspect, or –ar.
The default aspect ratio is 1:1. Cange this to whatever you want, only make sure that you are using whole numbers.
“Kingfisher diving underwater, National Geographic Photo, Sunset light, blue, red, aggressive, Sony α7 III, F 1.2, headshot –ar 2:3”
Chaos
Chaos changes how varied the result will be. It can go from 0- 100 and the higher it is, the more unusual and unexpected your image will become. It is prompted with the command:
–chaos <number 0-100>
Negative Prompting
The command –no should be used when you don’t want something in the prompt. For Example: –no Fish or –no Plants. However, in my experience, this command is not working every time.
Quality
This defines the rendering quality time and can go from .25 to 2. The default is 1. Higher values cost more and lower values cost less.
-q <.25, .5, 1, or 2>
Style
This refers to the different Midjourney versions 4a, 4b or 4c. If you want to use the latest version input –style 4c
Conclusion
In this article, I have shown you how to quickly improve the quality of your prompts. But so far no master has fallen from the sky. The only way to get better is to use your knowledge by prompting a lot on Midjourney.
If you believe that you are already ready to start selling your prompts, have a look at my article about the best Ai Prompt Marketplaces on the net.
The 6 Best Ai Prompt Marketplaces for selling Midjourney or ChatGPTÂ prompts
My Midjourney-related projects
- Discover Midjourney Mastery! Immerse yourself in the comprehensive Midjourney course on Skillshare. Gain a deep understanding of the Midjourney process, refine your skills, and achieve remarkable results: Join my class on Skillshare and get 1 month of Skillshare free.
- Create better prompts with my Midjourney Prompts Generator for Notion
- Check out my best prompts on Promtbase.
