How to Use Midjourney Complete Beginner Tutorial

I’ve tried a lot of AI image generators, and Midjourney is one of my favorites. It consistently yields the most intriguing results, and it can even perform hands, a task that AI picture creators find quite difficult. Finally, Midjourney has a web application over two years after its inception.

Prior to now, Discord was the only way to access it. Yes, you read correctly: a chat app—albeit a really good one—was the sole way to access the greatest AI image generator.

You can still do so if you’d want, but Midjourney is now accessible online and possibly ready for widespread use.

How to sign up for Midjourney

You must have a Google account or a Discord account in order to register for Midjourney. I’m going to presume you have one of these accounts, if not both, since they are both very popular and free services.

Click Sign Up on the Midjourney website, regardless of the method you choose. You can explore the Midjourney web application by logging in with your selected account. 

Is Midjourney free?

Sadly, Midjourney doesn’t always provide a free trial. You must sign up for a plan in order to begin creating photographs. They start at $10 per month for the Basic Plan, which offers about 200 image generations every month, and go up to $120 per month for the Mega plan, which offers you about 3,600 AI-generated images rapidly and, if you’re willing to wait a little longer, infinite image generations.

If you’re curious about generating AI art, the $10/month is worth it.

How to navigate Midjourney

Midjourney began on Discord since it is intended to be a communal tool for artists. Thus, a compilation of the most popular photos from the previous day appears as soon as you check in.

You can click into them to see the prompt and settings that were used to build them, and they serve as inspiration. 

You can locate pictures that fit a particular topic or theme by using the search box in the upper right corner of the screen. When creating your own photographs, keep in mind that all images made with Midjourney are public unless you intentionally create them secretly by subscribing to one of the more expensive plans.

• Create is where you make your own images.

• Organize is where you can see and sort any images you’ve generated.

• Chat is a front-end to the Discord community where you can interact with other users.

• Tasks is where you can rank images and complete surveys to help Midjourney in return for more free images.

But for the time being, we’re more interested in the bar that asks, “What will you imagine?” across the top of the screen.

User Experience

I’ve been using Midjourney for the last 5 months and have created more than 150 images with it. During this time, I’ve found it to be an amazing tool. In my experience, it’s about 80% better than most other AI image generation tools available today.

If you’re looking for an AI image generator for your own projects, client work, office tasks, or any activity that requires high-quality image creation, Midjourney is one of the best choices you can make.

How to create an image in Midjourney

Although prompts can be entered from anywhere, they are only visible in the Create tab, so go there. After that, enter a text prompt in the top bar and hit Enter or return. 

You are free to type anything you like, but here are some ideas to get you going:

• A Canadian man riding a moose through a maple forest, impressionist painting

• A Vermeer painting showing an Irish wolfhound enjoying a pint in a traditional Irish bar

• A hyper-realistic render of a mermaid swimming through a green kelp forest surrounded by fish

If your experience with Midjourney is anything like mine, at least one of them will be excellent.

How to edit an image in Midjourney

The ability to edit your photos is one of Midjourney’s best features. Click on the one you like to see your options.

In the lower right corner are all the options. Click More options and check every box if you can’t see them all. Hover your cursor over one to see what it does. You can access the pertinent assistance documents by clicking on it.

• I recommend that you start clicking around to get a feel for what Midjourney can do, but the basics of each one are:

• Vary Subtle and Vary Strong create four new versions of your original prompt. 

• Your image’s resolution is doubled with Upscale Subtle and Upscale Creative. While Creative adds new details, Subtle maintains the existing ones. 

• Remix Subtle and Remix Strong allow you to use your image as the base of an updated or tweaked prompt.

• Pan expands your image in the direction selected.

• Zoom zooms out of your image while keeping the aspect ratio the same.

• Rerun reruns the prompt with no changes. 

• Editor opens the editor (which we’ll look at in a moment).

• You can use the image as part of a new prompt, use the image style as part of a new prompt (we’ll look at that, too), or simply utilize the prompt once more using Use Image, Use Style, and utilize Prompt.

How to save Midjourney images

Once you’re happy with your creation, click the download icon in the top-right.

Additionally, you can search Midjourney for similar images (the magnifying glass icon) or like your image (the heart sign). Additionally, you may open the image in Discord, report it, and copy different parts of it using the Options button (three horizontal lines). 

How to prompt Midjourney effectively

Naturally, the ideas you provide to Midjourney are the true source of control. Currently, the key to getting good results from all the different generative AI tools is learning how to construct effective prompts.

One of the simplest AI image generators to obtain fantastic results from is Midjourney. Even simple requests like “a cow” can provide visually appealing results because its default style is far more artistic than most other image generators.

Still, there are some things you can do to make sure you get the best results possible with Midjourney. 

Be specific

The more precise and thorough you are with your prompt, the better. In general, just write out what you want to see, use precise figures and references, and use powerful, evocative language. “A childish painting of three enormous mice eating a house made of cheese” is far superior to “a painting of mice eating a cheese house.”

Don’t over-describe

However, adding more words won’t always improve the outcome and might even make Midjourney concentrate on less crucial information. Say “gigantic” instead of “big, large, huge” and have faith that AI will comprehend. If a prompt misses something, you can always try it again.

Consider the details

Midjourney advises taking into account your requests’ subject, medium, setting, lighting, color, mood, and composition. “A painted portrait of a Belgian shepherd in the woods, strong moonlight, deep blue colors, calm vibes” provides Midjourney with plenty of inspiration.

Use the editor

When an image is open, you can adjust certain areas of it or enlarge its borders by clicking Editor. These methods are referred to as out-painting and in-painting.

Playing around with the editor is the simplest approach to gain a sense of them. Use the aspect ratio tools to enlarge your canvas, adjust the prompt, and click Submit, or use the eraser tool to eliminate interior parts of the image.

Except for the parts you’ve added or deleted, everything will remain the same. One of Midjourney’s greatest benefits is the ability to edit and remix your photographs to achieve the desired results.

Explore the community

Midjourney is designed to be both an image generator and a community. Check out the app’s Explore, Chat, and Tasks sections if you need inspiration or assistance. To help Midjourney develop better, you can vote on photographs, participate in a daily theme challenge, and see what other people are doing.

Dig into Midjourney’s docs

I’m just scratching the surface of Midjourney’s many potent features. Checking out the help documents is the greatest approach to learn exactly what you can and cannot do with it. Check out the prompting guide, multi-prompts, the remix function, and how to use picture prompts.

Have fun

Because you don’t have to fight too hard to achieve stunning outcomes, using Midjourney is a lot of fun. Just give it a shot; if it doesn’t work, adjust your prompt and give it another go. By far the quickest method to discover what Midjourney is capable of is through trial and error.

Midjourney FAQs and tips

Can I use Midjourney for free?

Sadly, Midjourney no longer provides a free trial. When a new model or feature is introduced, there will occasionally be a special trial, but you can’t rely on being able to test it for free.

How to cancel a Midjourney subscription

To cancel a Midjourney subscription, go to your Midjourney account page, and click Cancel Plan.

How to give Midjourney a reference image on Discord

By selecting the picture icon and uploading your photo, you may provide Midjourney with a reference image on the web application. It can serve as a character reference, a stylistic reference, or a prompt. Hover your cursor over the image and choose the appropriate icon to choose the one you want. If you wish to utilize an image more than once, you can use shift-click.

On Discord, it works differently:

• Using the input –cref and the URL of your image, you can provide Midjourney with a character reference image. The weight that Midjourney will assign to the image as part of the prompt is determined by the argument –cw, which is followed by a number between 0 and 100. The default is 100 for context. 

• Using the input –sref and the URL of your image, you may provide Midjourney with a style reference image. Midjourney’s weighting of the image as part of the prompt is determined by the argument –sw, which is followed by a number between 0 and 1,000. Here, too, the default is 100.

How to add Midjourney to my Discord server

Go to the Midjourney Bot in the Discord App Directory and select Add App to add Midjourney to a Discord server under your control. Click Authorize after choosing the server you wish to add it to.

For more on configuring the Midjourney Bot on your server, check out Midjourney’s help docs.

How to change the aspect ratio with Midjourney

Midjourney creates square photos by default. Using the prompt bar’s choices (or, if you’re on Discord, using the –aspect or –ar arguments and providing an aspect ratio), you can create photos with a different shape. Once an image has been created, you can use the Pan arrows to manually adjust its aspect ratio.

Can you use Midjourney commercially?

As long as you follow the community norms, you are free to do with the image you make with Midjourney. The drawback of this is that AI-generated photos are not protected by copyright.

Stay tuned

Since Midjourney is currently in beta and undergoing intense development, things are changing quickly. Although Midjourney is much simpler to use with the new web app, the developers are continually developing functionality. Hopefully, in the near future, they will also include capabilities that make Midjourney easier to integrate into a process, perhaps even with AI Tool Spots integration.