Midjourney is one of my favorite AI image generators—and I've used a lot of them. It reliably produces the most interesting results, and it can even do hands, something AI image generators really struggle with. And finally, more than two years after launching, Midjourney has a web app.
Before, the only way to access it was through Discord. Yep, you read that right: the only way to access the best AI image generator was through a chat app (albeit a pretty great one).
You still can, should you be so inclined, but now Midjourney is available on the web and ready, perhaps, to go mainstream.
Table of contents:
How to use Midjourney without Discord
While using Midjourney used to require you to sign up with Discord, that's all optional now. If you want to, you still can, but we're going to start by looking at the much simpler web app.
How to sign up for Midjourney
To sign up for Midjourney, you need a Google account or a Discord account. Both are free and super popular services, so I'm going to assume you have one of these accounts, if not both.
Whichever you decide to use, head to the Midjourney website and click Sign Up. Log in with your chosen account, and you'll be able to look around the Midjourney web app.
Is Midjourney free?
Unfortunately, Midjourney doesn't consistently offer a free trial. To start generating images, you'll need to subscribe to a plan. They start at $10/month for the Basic Plan with ~200 image generations per month and go up to $120/month for the Mega plan, which gives you something like ~3,600 AI-generated images quickly and unlimited image generations if you're prepared to wait a bit longer.
If you're curious about generating AI art, the $10/month is worth it.
How to navigate Midjourney
Midjourney is designed to be a community tool for artists, which is why it started out on Discord. So the first thing you see when you log in is a collection of the most liked images of the last day.
They're there as inspiration, and you can click into them and see what prompt and settings were used to create them.
The search bar at the top right of the screen allows you to find images that match a certain subject or theme. Every image created with Midjourney is public unless you subscribe to one of the more expensive plans and deliberately generate images privately, so bear this in mind when it comes to making your own images.
In the left sidebar, you can navigate around Midjourney.
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.
For now, though, the bit that interests us is the bar across the top of the screen that asks, What will you imagine?
How to create an image in Midjourney
While you can enter a prompt from anywhere, you can only see them in the Create tab, so head there. Then type a text prompt into the top bar and press Enter or return.
You can type in whatever you want, but if you need some inspiration to get started, here are a few to try:
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
Wait a minute or so, and you'll have four variations of your prompt.
If your experience with Midjourney is anything like mine, at least one of them will be excellent.
How to edit an image in Midjourney
One of Midjourney's best features is that you have a lot of power to edit your images. If there's one you like, click on it to bring up your options.
All the options are in the bottom right. If you don't see them all, click More options, and check all the boxes. To find out what one does, hover over it. Clicking on it will bring you to the relevant help docs.
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.
Upscale Subtle and Upscale Creative double the resolution of your image. Subtle keeps details the same, while Creative adds additional 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).
Use Image, Use Style, and Use Prompt allow you to 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 just use the prompt again.
How to save Midjourney images
Once you're happy with your creation, click the download icon in the top-right.
You can also like your image (the heart icon) or search Midjourney for similar ones (the magnifying glass icon). And the Options button (three horizontal lines) allows you to copy various aspects of the image, report it, or open it in Discord.
How to use Midjourney on Discord
While using Midjourney used to require you to sign up with Discord, that's all optional now. But in case that's your jam, here's what you have to do.
Sign up for Midjourney with your Discord account.
Once you've got a paid plan, click your username in the bottom left and select Midjourney Discord.
Click Accept Invite, and you'll be in.
To get started, head to one of the #newbie channels and type
/imaginefollowed by the prompt you want to use.For more on controlling Midjourney through Discord, check out the super helpful docs or just play around.
How to prompt Midjourney effectively
Of course, the real control comes from the suggestions you give Midjourney. Right now, learning how to write effective prompts is the real trick to getting good results from all the various generative AI tools.
Midjourney is one of the easiest AI image generators to get awesome results from. Its default style is significantly more artistic than most other image generators, so even basic prompts like "a cow" can produce good-looking results.
Still, there are some things you can do to make sure you get the best results possible with Midjourney.
Be specific
The more specific and detailed you can be about what you want with your prompt, the better. Use strong and evocative words, specific quantities and references, and generally just write down what you want to see. "A childish painting of three enormous mice eating a house made of cheese" is much better than "a painting of mice eating a cheese house."
Don't over-describe
At the same time, throwing more words at Midjourney won't always give you better results, and may, in fact, cause it to focus on less important details. Don't say "big, large, huge"; just say "gigantic" and trust that AI will understand. You can always try a prompt again if it misses something.
Consider the details
Midjourney recommends considering the subject, medium, environment, lighting, color, mood, and composition of your requests. "A painted portrait of a Belgian shepherd in the woods, strong moonlight, deep blue colors, calm vibes" gives Midjourney heaps to work with.
Use images
Midjourney allows you to add multiple images as part of a prompt by clicking the image icon and uploading one.
There are three ways you can use an image:
As an image prompt
As a style reference
As a character reference
To choose one of the image modes, hover over it and select the relevant icon. You can also shift-click if you want to use an image in two or more ways.
In the screenshot above, I ran the prompt "a futuristic terminator, sent from the year 3000 to destroy earth" along with an image of me in the three different modes. You can see how using the image as part of the prompt made it a base (top row), using it as a style reference kind of matched the vibe (middle row), and using it as a character reference tried to more accurately match my appearance (bottom row).
You can find more about working with images in the help docs.
(You can also use a generated image as part of a prompt by clicking Use Image or Use Style when you're viewing it.)
Play around with parameters
In addition to written prompts, you can also use specific parameters to set key details like the aspect ratio, randomness, and style, as well as change the model version, and how much Midjourney's default style impacts things. You can access most of these choices by clicking the options icon in the prompt bar.
Strangely, one of the parameters that isn't available as a dropdown yet is the No parameter. It tries to prevent specific things from being generated. You can use it by typing something like --no trees at the end of your prompt.
You can see a full list of parameters here, including what they do and how to enter them.
Use the editor
If you click Editor with an image open, you can tweak specific parts of it or expand the edges of it. These are techniques called in-painting and out-painting.
The easiest way to get a feel for them is to just play around with the editor. Use the eraser tool to remove internal bits of the image or the aspect ratio tools to expand your canvas, tweak the prompt, and click Submit.
Everything will stay the same except the bits you've added or removed. This is one of Midjourney's best features as it allows you to tweak and rework your images to get them exactly how you want.
Explore the community
Midjourney is meant to be a community as well as an image generator. If you're stuck for inspiration or want help, check out the Explore, Chat, and Tasks sections of the app. You can see what other people are doing, get help with prompts or take part in a daily theme challenge, and vote on images to help Midjourney improve.
Dig into Midjourney's docs
Midjourney is packed with powerful features, and I'm only scraping the surface here. The best way to find out exactly what you can and can't do with it is to check out the help docs. Have a look at the guide to prompting, how to use image prompts, the remix feature, and multi-prompts.
Have fun
Midjourney is a lot of fun to use because you don't have to fight too hard to get beautiful results. Just try things, and if they don't work out, tweak your prompt and try again. Trial and error is by far the fastest way to figure out what Midjourney is capable of.
Midjourney FAQs and tips
Can I use Midjourney for free?
Unfortunately, Midjourney no longer offers a free trial. Occasionally, there will be a special trial when a new model or feature is released, but you can't count on being able to try it without paying.
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
In the web app, you can give Midjourney a reference image by clicking the image icon and uploading your image. You can use it as a prompt, a style reference, or a character reference. To select the one you want, hover over the image, and select the relevant icon. You can also shift-click if you want to use an image in two or more ways.
On Discord, it works differently:
You can give Midjourney a character reference image using the parameter
--creffollowed by the URL of your image. The parameter--cwfollowed by a number between 0 and 100 sets how heavily Midjourney will weight the image as part of the prompt. For context, the default is 100.You can give Midjourney a style reference image using the parameter
--sreffollowed by the URL of your image. The parameter--swfollowed by a number between 0 and 1,000 sets how heavily Midjourney will weight the image as part of the prompt. The default is 100 here, too.
How to add Midjourney to my Discord server
To add Midjourney to a Discord server you control, go to the Midjourney Bot in the Discord App Directory, and click Add App. Select the server you want to add it to, and click Authorize.
For more on configuring the Midjourney Bot on your server, check out Midjourney's help docs.
How to change the aspect ratio with Midjourney
By default, Midjourney generates square images. You can generate images with a different shape using the options in the prompt bar (or, if you're on Discord, using the --aspect or --ar parameters and specifying an aspect ratio). After you've generated an image, you can change its aspect ratio manually using the Pan arrows.
Can you use Midjourney commercially?
If you create an image using Midjourney, it's yours to do with as you like—as long as you abide by the community guidelines. The caveat to this is that images generated by AI can't copyrighted.
Stay tuned
Midjourney is still in beta and under very active development, so things are changing fast. The new web app makes Midjourney a lot easier to use, but the developers are still adding features. Hopefully, over the next while, they'll also introduce features that allow Midjourney to fit better as part of a workflow—maybe even with Zapier support.
Related content:
This article was originally published in April 2023. The most recent update was in September 2024.
