How To Get Photorealistic Results in Midjourney AI
Mastering Prompts, Iterations, and Enhancements for Photographic Results
Getting photorealistic results in Midjourney, the popular AI art generator, is possible with the right prompts and techniques. While Midjourney excels at creating imaginative and stylized art, it can also produce stunningly realistic images that look like photographs.
Before diving into this article, let me tell you that I have curated over 300+ Incredible Photorealistic Midjourney AI Art Prompts, to create stunning images in seconds, just copy and paste them. To save your time and effort, you can grab your PDF list by clicking on the link in my bio.
Here are some tips for getting the most photorealistic results when using Midjourney.
Keywords and Descriptors
The key to photorealism in Midjourney starts with using very specific keywords and descriptors in your prompts. Terms like “photographic”, “photorealistic”, “8k resolution”, and “Nikon” help steer Midjourney toward a more realistic style.
Describe elements like lighting, depth of field, focus, shadows, reflections, and textures. The more details you provide, the more realistic the output will be.
Prompt Structure
Structure your prompts in a way that emphasizes realism from the start. A simple prompt might be:
“A photorealistic portrait of a smiling old man, wrinkles, high resolution”
But an even better prompt that promotes photorealism could be:
“An extremely detailed and photorealistic close-up portrait of an elderly man with a warm, friendly smile, captured at 8k resolution with a Nikon camera. Sharp focus on facial features, wrinkles are clearly defined, bright natural lighting, soft shadows and reflections”
Evolving Images
Midjourney creates images through an iterative process. Letting it run through multiple cycles while providing directing feedback with each iteration is key to improving realism.
Start with a simple prompt, let Midjourney generate some images, pick the one that looks most realistic, and enter “Make this more photorealistic” as the next prompt. Or provide notes on specific elements that need refinement like lighting, perspective, depth of field, etc.
Each cycle should produce improved realism. Evolving the image over 5–10 iterations usually yields significant photorealism improvements.
Upscaling
Once you’ve evolved the Midjourney image and are happy with the general style and content, try upscaling it to increase resolution. Sites like Let’s Enhance can upscale images up to 4x the original resolution using AI. Higher resolution enhances photorealism.
You can then take this upscaled image and run it through Midjourney again with a prompt like “Photorealistic version of this 8k portrait” for further enhancements.
Post-Processing
As a final step, taking the Midjourney image into a photo editing program for adjustments can add that last bit of photorealistic polish. Subtle changes to color balance, contrast, sharpness, noise, and gradients can make the image look more photographic.
But use a light touch here — overprocessing can have the opposite effect and make the image look less realistic.
With the right prompts and techniques, Midjourney can produce photorealistic images rivalling actual photographs. It takes experimentation, evolving the images over multiple cycles, upscaling for added resolution, and a bit of post-processing finesse.
The results can be incredible, allowing Midjourney to transcend its reputation for stylized art and venturing convincingly into photorealism.
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