Midjourney Prompts and You! Learn to Love Your AI Robot Overlords

Can you believe that no one is talking about AI?! You’d think it’d be everywhere by now, but here we are the very first blog you’ll read about the likes of AI. What a time to be alive. For real though, like seemingly every other business these days we’ve begun to incorporate AI into our workflow, specifically ChatGPT and Midjourney. There are articles on articles about the wonders of AI, however, like with any new technology product your mileage may vary. Let’s give you a peek behind the curtain of how we’ve fine tuned our usage of AI services like Midjourney and how you too might fall in love with our new robot overlords. Wait, what?

So just what the hell is Midjourney? It’s one of those things where you’ve heard it said too many times at this point to ask, “I mean I totally know what it is, but like maybe you could explain it for Steve, y’know his girlfriend goes to another school.” Don’t worry, no judgment here. Midjourney is a text-to-image AI generator where the only limit is your imagination. Well and the prompts. The prompts are also the limit. With most AI programs the real power is in the effectiveness of your prompt, or what you are asking the AI to do. To begin you type ‘forward slash’ ‘imagine’ inside a Discord enabled Midjourey server.

There are a few key sections to your prompt following the imagine opening. The Text Prompt is the only required portion, while the Image Prompt can give you more finite control over the finished result, and the Parameters are where the real AI money is made. The money is bones.

Image Prompts

Image URLs can be added to a prompt to influence the style and content of the finished result. Image URLs always go at the front of a prompt.

Text Prompts

The text description of what image you want to generate. See below for prompting information and tips. Well-written prompts help generate amazing images.

Keep Reading: How AI is Disrupting Ecommerce and What You Should Do About It

Parameters

Parameters change how an image is generated. Parameters can change aspect ratios, models, upscalers, and lots more. Parameters go at the end of the prompt.

Those parameters are where the robots really let us feel alive. Within the parameters you can define everything from famous camera bodies and lenses to your depth of field, lighting, and perspective.

Cameras

Camera selection is paramount for producing high-quality images. Just like how those old Kodak disposable cameras had that look so too do high-end cameras. Naturally different cameras can and will produce different visual results. A few to start experimenting with are the Canon EOS-1D, Sony A7S, Holga 120N, and even a Pinhole camera.

Lenses

Just like with the camera you can select different lenses as you would if you were taking actual photographs. Your lens choice will provide optimal focal lengths and aperture ranges and significantly impact the final result. The fine control of these lenses comes in the next step.

Depth of Field (Aperture)

The aperture controls the focus and background blur, think of how you might select “Cinematic” or “Portrait” mode when taking a photo on an iPhone. Here is what you might expect from each of those parameter settings.

1. f/1.4: Large aperture for low-light situations and shallow depth of field.
2. f/2.8: Aperture for fast lenses, good low-light performance and subject isolation.
3. f/5.6: Mid-range aperture for sharp, balanced images.
4. f/8: The sweet spot, delivering sharp images and increased depth of field.
5. f/16: Small aperture for deep depth of field, ideal for landscapes and group shots.

Lighting

Lighting has a major impact on your final result in Midjourney—use it to convey mood, texture, and depth.

1. Natural Light: Utilizes sunlight, or ambient light for a natural look.
2. Softbox: Diffuses artificial light for a soft, even illumination- often used in portraits.
3. Reflectors: Bounces light onto a subject to fill shadows and balance light.
4. Backlighting: Positions the light behind the subject for a rim-light effect or silhouettes.
5. Rembrandt Lighting: Classic, one-light setup that creates a triangle of light on

the subject’s cheek.

1. UV Backlighting: Create a dramatic black and white or specific color silhouettes.

Perspective

Perspective refers to how the camera is held and positioned. Small subtle movements can have a profound effect on how the final image is perceived.

1. Eye-Level: Natural, human-eye level viewpoint, creating relatable images.
2. Low -Angle: Lower position, making subjects appear larger and more dominant.
3. High-Angle: Elevated position, making subjects smaller and less imposing.
4. Dutch Angle: Tilting the camera for diagonal composition, adding tension and dynamic

energy to images.

1. Birds-eye View: Shooting from directly above, resulting in an overhead perspective.

All together now!

What happens when you seamlessly blend all of these disparate elements together into one beautiful prompt? You please the robot overlords. You bring bliss to their binary. Beep boop blorp. Or you make a kick ass image, could go either way. A well tailored prompt might look something like this:

/imagine Person walking in the distance, blue sky, silhouetted, natural lighting, Leica APOSummicron -M 50mm f/2 ASPH, –ar16:9 –s 750 –q 2 –v 5

If you don’t yet feel robot-y enough for the robot club, here’s what all that means:

1. –ar 16:9: This is to direct the Aspect Ratio.
2. –s 750: MJ has a specific look which can be dialed-in within a scale of 0-1000.
3. –q 2: Accepts values between 0.25 and 5. The higher the number the higher the quality, time of render and computer usage.
4. –v 5: Dictates which version of Midjourney to use when rendering the image. Earlier versions will output a lower quality and size image.

“That’s a spicy meatball,” I hear you say, but robots shouldn’t taste! And you’re right, it’s a lot to include and manage but when done right you can effectively create stunning imagery with Midjourney. I encourage you to play around with the various parameters and discover just what’s possible. It’s truly an exciting time in the world of graphics and design.

At LimeLight, we’ve begun to utilize Midjourney as a way to ideate more quickly. Rather than taking the time to search for just the right stock image to get our idea across we have much more finite control over the output using Midjourney. We’ve seen great success with this in concept presentations and overall our processes are streamlined. This leaves us more time to focus on your brand and what it could be. Ready to find out how? Let’s talk.