Midjourney Review 2024 - Pros, Cons and Features - Fritz ai (2024)

Imagine a robo dragon that breathes fire and also carries a flame thrower because, well, it’s a robo dragon. Now imagine drawing it out on a digital tool. It can take time, and of course, artistic skills. But not with Midjourney.

Midjourney is a Discord-based AI image generation tool that uses text commands to create images. You can enter the prompt for the kind of picture you’re looking for, and the system will generate images for you.

So you can describe your robo dragon, or an alien spaceship, or a dancing kitten, or absolutely anything – and the Midjourney bot will make it for you.

Key Takeaways

• Midjourney works on Discord so you need to be familiar with Discord chat
• It generates high-quality images based on text prompts
• It can create images in several artistic styles from sketches to paintings to hyper-realistic photos
• You can interact with the community and join channels
• It allows you to tweak your images and generate more variants
• You can also upscale your image to enlarge it
• Midjourney lets you fine-tune your images by specifying aspect ratio, quality, and chaos
• It has amazing natural language processing features that generate accurate results
• Midjourney version 5 was launched in March 2023 and users can access it
• It doesn’t have a free plan but there are different paid plans according to user needs

How We Tested the Product

Testing Midjourney was exciting. I got to generate some cool images by giving prompts. I don’t claim to be an artist but it did seem like an artistic thing to do. You’re only limited by your imagination. I tried giving it simple as well as complex prompts. And Midjourney always gave accurate results.

It generates four images with one prompt. You can select one image of the four and tweak it. I tried upscaling the image, and it zoomed out perfectly well. I played with different styles and the outcomes were flawless each time. Testing Midjourney was less like work and more like fun.

Let’s move to the pros and cons of Midjourney.

Midjourney Pros and Cons

What is Midjourney?

Midjourney is a text-to-image generation tool that works on artificial intelligence. It uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and reads the prompts entered by users. Based on these prompts, it generates relevant images.

Midjourney keeps evolving and it is currently in version 5.2. It doesn’t have its own app and it works on Discord chat. It has a large community and you can join channels to interact with other artists.

While it can generate amazing images, it’s not a good idea to generate your business designs with it since all the images are public.

ahWhile there’s a stealth mode, it only hides images from others on Midjourney.com. If an image is generated on a public channel, it will always be public, stealth or not.

It’s based on Discord so if you’ve already used Discord, you already pretty much know how to use Midjourney. It has a thriving community where you can share art and ideas, and come in contact with like-minded individuals.

Unlike Dall-E, Midjourney is a self-funded project and has a small team behind it. If you’re an artist, you can explore different art styles with Midjourney.

Play around with techniques and parameters and see what the AI delivers. With super realistic images, you’ll be surprised at your own creativity. And it generates all that in no time.

How Does Midjourney Work?

Midjourney uses two machine learning techniques: Diffusion models and Large Language Models. With the Large Language Model, Midjourney understands the meaning of the prompt entered by users. With diffusion, the system adds noise to the training dataset.

Then it reverses the noise to recover the original image. This way, the AI trains itself to generate accurate results based on the prompt.

Let me put it in simple terms. Let’s say you want to create an image of “ladybugs on blades of grass.” The AI will start with noise – kinda like TV static. It will then diffuse the noise step by step to arrive at images that resemble what you’ve prompted. It gradually reduces the noise and comes up with clear images.

Using it is pretty simple. You have to create a Discord account and join the Midjourney server. You can use your browser or Discord app for this. Let’s do this step by step.

Using Midjourney

Midjourney runs on Discord, a text and voice chat app. Let’s begin.

1. Create an account on Discord. You can download the Discord app or just open it in your browser.

2. Accept the invitation for Midjourney, you can find it on their website.

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Once you click on the link, you’ll get the invite

3. Enter Midjourney

4. Join any channel. A newbie channel would be a good start. There are some channels in the left panel. Or you can search for a channel on the search bar on the top right.

5. You cannot generate images without a subscription. To subscribe to their paid plans, type /subscribe in the text box at the bottom.

6. It will take you to their pricing page. You can subscribe to the plan you like and start generating images.

7. To generate an image, type /imagine and it will open the image prompt. In that prompt, you can describe your image and the AI will generate it for you.

8. Once you give a prompt, you’ll get four images. You can select one and upscale it or tweak it. When you’re happy with the results, you can save that image.

It’s a pretty basic prompt but you can be as specific as you want.

How to Upscale Images

When you generate images, you’ll see some buttons under it. These buttons will be labeled U1, U2, U3, U4, V1, V2, V3, and V4.

The U buttons are for upscaling the selected image and the V buttons create four new variations of the image you have selected.

To save an image, click on it and it will zoom out. Now you can right click on it and select Save Image. Keep in mind that all the images generated on a public channel are public and can be saved by anyone.

Midjourney Special Commands

Just like /imagine, there are other special commands to interact with the Midjourney bot.

Here are some of them.

/ask to ask a question

/fast for faster results

/stealth for stealth mode (your images will not be visible to others)

/subscribe to subscribe to a paid plan

There are many other commands and you’ll find a complete list here.

Parameters

There are special parameters you can place with each command. Let’s discuss some of them.

–aspect to change the aspect ratio. For example –ar 3:2 will give an aspect ratio of 3:2 (used in print photography). The default aspect ratio is 1:1.

–no is for negative prompts. For example, if you don’t want flowers in an image, you can use this prompt to remove them.

–tile will generate images that can fit with each other seamlessly like tiles.

You’ll find all Midjourney parameters here.

Midjourney Pricing

• Midjourney has four plans.
• Basic Plan for $8/month
• Standard Plan for $24/month
• Pro Plan for $48/month
• Mega Plan for $96/month

These are annual charges and if you want to get a monthly package that will be a bit costlier. For example, the Basic plan will cost $10/month on the monthly plan. There are no free trials.

In the Basic plan, you can get about 200 generations. All your public images will be visible to everyone. Stealth options are available on the Pro Plan and Mega Plan.

If you’re a casual user who’s trying image generation for fun, the Basic Plan would suffice.

How to Write Creative Midjourney Prompts

Anyone can write a generic prompt. But it takes experience to write a prompt that brings out the beauty of the AI that Midjourney offers. Here are some ideas to generate creative images.

Describe in Detail

Sometimes we forget that it’s AI and not a human. Words like “big” or “huge” can be misleading. Artificial intelligence might not understand the context of these words unless you give a detailed description.

Be Concise

You have to be descriptive but not overly descriptive. If your description is more than 40 words long, there are chances that it will be ignored. If it gets longer than that, the probability of it being ignored will be higher.

Use the Negative Prompt

If you don’t want a certain thing in your image, you can create a negative prompt for it. For example, you might be looking for an image of a farm with no animals in it. You can write something like

/imagine a farmland –no animals

Play with the Creative Tag

If you want out-of-the-ordinary images, try the creative tag. This will let the Midjourney bot have creative freedom with your image.

For example, you can write

/imagine a flying dinosaur –creative

Try a Prompt Generator

A prompt generator is an AI tool that will help you with generating prompts. It’s like an AI assistant to help you generate a prompt for an AI-generated image.

Is Midjourney Open-Source?

Midjourney is not open source. It is a self-funded project developed by a small team. Compare this with Dall-E which is developed by OpenAI. Since Dall-E is open source, its code can be used, modified, and distributed. However, it’s not true with Midjourney.

Midjourney hasn’t received any external funding and has raised the funds for its software by providing excellent services and attracting users.

So while the images generated in the public domain on Midjourney are “open source”, the software itself isn’t open source.

Who Owns Midjourney

Midjourney was founded by David Holz. He became an internet sensation after launching Midjourney and generating $200 million in revenue – and that too with a small team.

In an interview with The Verge, Holz explains why he chose Discord for his software.

“…if you want your own social experience, Discord is really great.”

Before founding Midjourney, Holz was the co-founder of Leap Motion, a motion-tracking technology company.

Despite the capital raised by Midjourney, Holz wants to be seen as a member of an applied research lab instead of a business.

Midjourney was founded on July 12, 2022, in San Francisco, California. The company is self-funded and independent of venture capital investors.

Is Midjourney Safe?

The personal data that you provide to Midjourney is stored in its US servers. The company makes sure that the user data is safe and secure. It does not sell any of your data. If you have used Midjourney, you can submit a request to Midjourney to delete your personal data.

To request for data deletion, you’ll have to submit your email address, Discord user ID, and Midjourney user ID.

When you generate images on a public channel, your images will be public. This is why it’s advisable not to generate business images such as logos or other designs using Midjourney public channels.

According to Midjourney documents, images generated on private servers can also be visible to other users.

User Reviews

In my opinion, Midjourney is an excellent image generation tool. However, to see what other users feel about it, I went through several review websites.

Most of them gave great ratings. However, some users were upset about the lack of a dedicated app.

Another issue with Midjourney that people faced was that there was no customer service. I checked and while there is a channel called support, it’s mostly bot operated.

That’s one issue that many customers face. And I agree – if you’re paying for a service, you should get some support.

Plus, there’s no free trial so there’s no way of testing the service beforehand. You have to pay them to test the services.

Apart from these issues, the image generation is awesome and returns amazing results. You can get as specific as you want and AI will generate accurate images.

While the earlier versions made weird hands and feet, the new Midjourney bot gives good hand and feet results. However, it still fudges up when it comes to having text in images.

For example, if you want to show a busy street with lots of banners, the text on those banners may not make sense.

But I’m hoping that will improve with the next variation.

My user rating: 4.6/5

Top Midjourney Alternatives

Let’s discuss some options you can use instead of Midjourney.

1. Dall-E

Developed by OpenAI, Dall-E is a close competitor of Midjourney. The latest release by OpenAI is Dall-E 3 and it’s more sophisticated than its predecessors, Dall-E and Dall-E 2.

It’s easier to use than Midjourney. If you haven’t ever used Discord, Dall-E will be a better option than Midjourney.

Dall-E 3 comes with an even better context understanding than its predecessors. It is integrated with ChatGPT so if you use ChatGPT, you can generate images using Dall-E.

The Midjourney interface can be a bit overwhelming for a new user. In comparison, Dall-E is rather simple and you can just give the prompt to generate images.

2. Stability AI

Stability (or Stable Diffusion) has two models: Stable Diffusion XL and SDXL Turbo. Diffusion XL is the foundation model.

You can download it and create beautiful artwork. SDXL Turbo is the latest model that’s superfast and generates images as soon as you type the prompt. It delivers a powerful performance that generates images in a single step.

This means that instead of 50 steps, the system takes only one step and generates superfast images.

Stable Diffusion is a good choice for users who are looking for quick results. AI image generation on other tools can sometimes take a few minutes. SDXL Turbo can be a good choice to cut out the waiting time.

3. Jasper Art

Jasper Art is a versatile tool with several other features. It’s super simple to use and is good for new users. It asks for a text prompt and lets you choose art styles. Once you make all the selections, your image is generated.

Jasper comes with a whole set of AI services apart from image generation. While it has no free plans, it does offer a 7-day free trial. Jasper is targeted towards marketing and offers several other services such as AI content generation, marketing campaigns, SEO, and others.

So if you’re an entrepreneur or a marketer looking for images for your website or blog, Jasper would be the best option.

Conclusion

Midjourney is great for AI-based image generation. It’s quick and accurate and runs on Discord. It doesn’t have a free trial so you’ll need to purchase a plan to use it.

While it gives remarkable results, it somewhat lacks in the customer care department.

What kind of images did you generate with Midjourney? Share your prompt ideas in the comments and let me know.

Frequently Asked Questions