Discovering a New Realm: My First Adventure with Midjourney on AI Art
I was first introduced to Midjourney after seeing someone post photos that they created through the app on Twitter. The art that it generated looks incredible, and my initial thought was “this had to take forever to generate,” but the reality was much different than what I thought. I decided to do what most tech enthusiasts do when they gain interest in a new technology: I googled it.
After finding the Midjourney website, the first thing I noticed was an absent sign up button. Other AI tools such as ChatGPT normally operate like most traditional webapps. Midjourney operates from Discord. For those who are unfamiliar, Discord is a free communication app that lets you share voice, video, and text chat with friends and developers. To get access to Midjourney we simply click on the “Join the Beta” button.
After I joined the beta, this started a free trial with access to the newbies channels. I could still view the other channels but could not make any posts to them. So I clicked on one of the newbies channels to see what it was about. The first thing I noticed was an absolute flood of posts coming in. Midjourney also seemed to work fast at generating these photos. So I decided to give it a whirl.
To begin, I ran the command that can be found on their getting started page, followed by whatever came to mind first. I’ll add an example command below, with the actual output.
/imagine A beautiful anime style blue footed booby with sunglasses and a tuxedo
This took less than a minute to generate four samples and, to be honest, they look slick. At this point you can choose from any of them by clicking on one of the ‘U’ buttons (U1, U2, U3, U4). This will upscale whichever I choose. Choosing from one of the ‘V’ buttons (V1, V2, V3, V4) will create a new variant based off of which I choose. From my perspective, U1 is the James Bond of the group. U2 is Mr. Worldwide. U3 is a mobster I don’t want to fight. U4 reminds me of someone from The Kingsman movies. Regardless, I’ll choose U4 to upscale.
Now I have some more choices! I am also noticing the eyes are a bit wonky. But the show goes on. I can choose one of the choices listed: Make variations, light upscale redo, or beta upscale redo. For this example, I’ll pick beta to see what I get.
The Beta upscale seems to have added a little more detail to the feathers. The sunglasses are also shaded in now and hide the eyes. This looks better to me now since the eyes aren’t goofed up. There are also two new options that weren't there before: detailed upscale redo, and the apparently new remaster. I'm not necessarily limited to one or the other. I’ll show what both do below.
The new remaster looks better than the original by a wide margin. It also spits out two to choose from. Both look amazing, with enhancements to both the feathers and the sunglasses. Nothing really looks out of place. I personally think these are the best version. The detailed upscale however…
This poor blue footed booby. He has been through the wringer and will haunt my dreams forever. This is what I would imagine The Walking Dead zombies would look like in the blue footed booby multiverse. The eyes look strange again, although the glasses are still mirrored. The suit and bowtie are in tatters. Not to mention there is a small hole in the head. Let’s not mention the missing arm.
But it’s still impressive. This is only one example of something silly. There has been a ton of absolutely amazing art created using this one tool. There are even a ton of different ways to use Midjourney. Midjourney can be used to create clothing designs for an online shop, deliver UX designs for companies, and much more. I personally used it to create a neat little robot logo for my personal site. But what is the cost? Can I generate images forever? Not quite.
In order to subscribe to Midjourney, you must be on the Midjourney Discord server. From there on one of the newbie channels type /subscribe to get a personal link to the subscription page. They have the classic annual or monthly plan tiers, with the annual giving a 20% discount. Monthly, you can spend as little as $10. The annual, after doing some tough math, saves you $2, but you must pay for the full year upfront. There are also basic, standard, and pro plans with different benefits.
Is it worth it? In my opinion, absolutely. But it depends on how often I would use it. For me, I am an enthusiast who likes new tech as well as building things. So I definitely plan on using this more in the future, but I don’t think I’ll fork over the money for a pro plan just yet. This article just scratches the surface at some of its capabilities. There are tons of different styles that can be added to prompts. I recommend checking out the Midjourney docs for more information.
I am impressed by Midjourney. But it’s also scary. As other AI tools like this advance, it has the potential to truly disrupt creative jobs. One could generate tons of unique t-shirt designs, logos, wall décor, jewelry, and more by just sending an imagine prompt. Only time will tell what comes next. Until then, I encourage others to go and try it out. The beta is limited, but free. Type in anything you can imagine and it comes to life.
