Midjourney has emerged as a beacon for artists, designers, and enthusiasts wanting to harness the potential of artificial intelligence to make spectacular visual material in the age of AI-driven creation.
Midjourney’s AI can transform ordinary words into rich imagery with the correct triggers, blurring the lines between human imagination and digital expression.
What is Midjourney?
Midjourney is an AI algorithm developed by an independent research group that specializes in making images from written descriptions, providing a new method of generating visual information. It uses powerful algorithms to interpret prompts and create intricate artworks or design components ranging from realistic to surreal.
Graphic design, concept art, and creative exploration are the most common applications for both professionals and hobbyists. To get the most out of Midjourney, users should learn how to write creative, descriptive prompts and then change them repeatedly to test different results.
Quick Tips
- Use simple words: Words like girl, boy, dragon, or forest are good examples of simple words. The AI will better understand your prompt if you use a simple, direct language
- Be specific: Don’t let the AI figure out what you want to create. Your image generation will take a lot more if you’re not specific in your request.
- Use adjectives: It helps if you use adjectives such as “beautiful” or “detailed”. The AI will surprise you if you’re enriching the vision.
- Use styles: If you want a particular photography or art style, instead of describing it, write the style name or artist in the prompt. Style descriptions such as “cyberpunk”, “vintage”, “abstract” or “in the style of Picasso” go a long way.
Best Midjourney Prompts for Portraits
We’ve noticed that many users try to get the best portraits possible out of Midjourney and while you can get decent results with simple prompts, you can craft it better. Let’s try out 3 different portrait prompts and see the differences.
The Young Kimono Girl
Let’s try a simple black-and-white portrait with a specific apparel.
A black and white portrait of a young woman wearing a traditional Japanese kimono
The stripped-shirt girl
You can go into more detail, specifying the style and the camera used.
Portrait of beautiful woman in striped shirt, in the style of golden light, canon eos 90d, serene faces, uhd image, free brushwork, soviet
Close-up portrait
Let’s go even closer with more details
A portrait of a woman that's posing for a photo, in the style of close-up intensity, sleek, light cyan and dark bronze, pointillist portraits, zeiss batis 18mm f/2.8, light magenta and dark gray, phoenician art
The portrait that inspired a drawing
And now for a bit of fun, I’ve seen some users try this and found it enjoyable and funny.
Drawing of a a man with beard, next to the drawing the photo of the man with a beard who inspired him to make the drawing
The Fantasy Queen
Lastly, we want to go a bit overboard, into the fantasy realm. Evidently, you can go into more detail with this prompt, but the result is amazing as a starting point.
A portrait of a woman in a fantasy setting, dressed as a queen, sitting on a gothic throne
Best Midjourney Prompts for Painting
Midjourney can create beautiful paintings with the right prompts. If you want to create your own piece of art or just to impress people, I’ve crafted some prompts that you can craft upon or diversify.
The Autumn Canopy
Let’s start with a simple nature painting. Since it’s Fall (in many places), let’s capture all those colors and the feeling of Autumn.
Stylized interpretation of an autumn forest canopy, with sparse yet vibrant leaves against a clear sky. The scene portrays the essence of fall with a simplified color palette. Style mimics minimalism with vibrant hues. Executed as an oil painting with broad, textured brushstrokes reminiscent of modern art.
The Autumn Forest
Early morning light filters through a minimalist autumn forest, with trees reduced to mere silhouettes and the ground covered in a carpet of stylized, vibrant leaves. The atmosphere is peaceful and refreshing. In a minimalist style, this scene is expressed through oil painting with an emphasis on strong, dynamic brushwork and a vivid yet restrained color scheme.
Rome Market in the 1500
Let’s imagine Rome, in a painting, circa 1500, with the people selling their wares, talking and so forth.
Create an oil painting of a bustling marketplace in Ancient Rome, circa 1500 AD. Capture the vibrant atmosphere with throngs of people engaged in conversation, haggling, and selling goods. Include period-accurate attire, a variety of merchant stalls offering items like textiles, pottery, and food, with the architecture reflective of the era.
Salvador Dali Fantasy
Let’s try something a bit more weird, shall we? Let’s craft a prompt to create a surreal painting that all kinds of things in it, but make it in the style of Salvador Dali.
A surreal painting in the style of Salvador Dali. The scene has flying monkeys, in a dream-like scenery, with fantasy elements.
The Italian Sunset
I’m a big fan of Italy, went there a lot of times. Needless to say, I also enjoyed the simple, sea paintings I saw when visiting various places. So, let’s see what prompt we can craft for this.
A peaceful Italian seaside village with colorful buildings, boats, and the sun setting on the water. The painting is made in the style of Impressionism
Fantasy Dynamic Painting
Last, in the painting category, we’ll try to envision a fantasy fight between a hero and a monster. As always, we can let our imagination go wild and see what we got. I’m thinking Iron Man, and maybe a dragon.
A dynamic fighting scene between Iron Man and a flying dragon. They fight in the air, with Iron Man holding a spear. The ocean underneath has big waves, clashing against a big cliff.
Best Midjourney Prompts for Digital Art
Everybody loves digital art and I’m no exception. We can have a lot more freedom with digital art since it doesn’t need a specific style, you can combine style or just create simple prompts, until you get what you envisioned. Let’s see some examples, shall we?
The Steampunk Detective
I love Steampunk because it combines modern technology with Victorian-era fashion. To get a good Steampunk art, the more details you include, the best the generated photo is.
A dapper steampunk detective hero stands before a grandiose clockwork map of the city, plotting his next move. The scene is set in an opulent study filled with antique furniture and glowing brass instruments. The steampunk style is prominent, featuring elaborate mechanical designs and a touch of Victorian elegance in every detail.
The Star Trek Battle Scene
I always loved the Star Trek battle scenes whenever I saw them as a little kid. While not so over-the-top as current movies, we can envision them to be by crafting a good MJ prompt.
A sci-fi scene of a space battle in the Star Trek universe between many battleships. The USS Enterprise is leading the fight, shooting lasers. A space station explodes in the background as the fight intensifies.
Nolan’s Batman
My favorite Batman, because it’s dark, gritty and I love the style. Let’s do a digital art poster with Batman, shall we?
A poster with Batman, Gotham city at night, Christopher Nolan style, dramatic and dynamic, atmosphere of darkness and horror, dramatic light, highly detailed, hyper-realistic.
The Boy and the Sea
Being a father, I always loved when my kid was playing at the seaside, with the sea behind him. I took a million pictures of him and I would’ve loved a painting with him playing. This is the closes I could get to that idea, which made me love Midjourney even more.
A peacful beach scene with a boy sitting on the beach, playing with a stick, surrounded by seaguls, in a digital art style with water and sand effects.
Digital Printables
Digital printables are very popular right now, many people even sell them on Etsy or Shopify and most of them are created with AI. Midjourney is excellent at creating printables, let’s see a couple of examples that you can use to craft your own ideas and maybe start an online store. Evidently, you can create your printables one by one or ask Midjourney to create a series of images.
Planners
A blue, pink and white monthly planner design for chic moms
Stickers
Another best selling category on Etsy is stickers. You can create stickers of any kind, only limited by your imagination. Here’s an example:
A full body portrait of a cute boy, wearing a streetwear outfit,fantasy, “White background”::1.5. Vector illustration isolated. Vector clip art.
Floral Pattern
Floral patterns have many uses, and people are willing to pay good bucks for good patterns.
A recursive floral pattern, pink and blue, white background.
As you can see, you can create as many printables ideas you want, from patterns and stickers, to backgrounds and digital paintings.
Best Midjourney Prompts for Manga/Anime
We’ll end this Midjourney guide with the best prompts for Manga. The Manga style is beloved worldwide and it’s only fitting we’ll end this article with our best crafted Midjourney Manga prompts. However, for better Manga images, we can use the “–niji” option in Midjourney.
Let’s start by crafting a simple, default, anime-style photo.
The Girl Chasing Butterflies
An anime-style image of a girl, dressed in pink, in a Zen harden, running after a butterfly.
Now let’s see what we can generate with the niji option on.
The Warrior Girl
A warrior girl, dressed for war --niji 5
As you can see, the difference is staggering when adding the niji option. The “niji” option in MIdjourney comes with several styles that can transform your Manga vision. These styles include expressive, cute, scenic and original.
Let’s generate an expressive style using the niji option.
The Anime Girl (/w expressive)
A photorealistic close-up portrait of beautiful girl, with long blonde hair, red dress and ornaments on her head --niji 5 --style expressive
Now let’s see how we can do a scenic Anime-style photo.
The Return (/w scenic)
I love the scenic option for niji. You can create awesome sceneries or landscapes. Here’s a good example of that:
A vast city, a boy, a cat and a dog --niji 5 --style scenic
And there you have it, the best Midjourney prompts for various styles and images. And we didn’t even scratch the surface on this one. We’ll probably go into more detail for specific prompts, but as of now, I think you have a good idea on how to craft good prompts for Midjourney.
The limit is your imagination, feel free to explore the AI-generator with everything your mind can make up.
