Experiments with Midjourney

MAY 4, 2023  ·  707 WORDS

Midjourney, according to their landing page is:

... an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species.

Today, that means interacting with the generative AI model via a Discord bot by running the /imagine command and providing a text prompt. The model generates four low resolution variations which can be upscaled or rolled further to create more variations.

Playing around with the bot has become a new hobby at this point. It is frustrating at times but also very rewarding when the model comes up with something that is truly beautiful. I've been inspired by the creative people on the internet on Twitter and Reddit. Here are some experiments you can try to get started.

Art styles

a painting of a hot air ballon in the style of [artist] --ar 16:9 --style raw --s 250

With Midjourney, you can explore various art styles while developing an image. Imagine choosing a hot air balloon as your subject. Through experimentation, Midjourney generates captivating images, offering a unique opportunity to learn about various art styles.

Remix

With Remix, the general composition of the image can be modified to create a new image with updates to aspect ratio, Midjourney model version, and even the prompts.

a shot of a {female, male} model in a desert oasis fashion photography --ar 16:9 --style raw --s 250
Model before
Model after

Chaos

As mentioned earlier, Midjourney offers four different variations for any prompt you provide. Sometimes, you might have a specific image in mind, and you'd like these variations to closely align with your desired outcome. On other occasions, you may want to explore creative possibilities, where a greater level of variety is preferred. To achieve this, you have the option to control the chaos or c parameter. By adjusting chaos, which ranges from 0 to 100, you can instruct Midjourney on how much it should vary the initial four images in the grid.

crowd in city square, 18th Century hyper-realistic image --ar 16:9 --chaos {5, 95}

Notice how all the variations are very similar to each other when chaos is low. They all share a similar perspective and only contain minor changes to the buildings and colors. On the other hand, when chaos is high, we get a variety of results for the same prompt.

Seeds