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33 Best Art Styles for Midjourney + Prompt Examples

Using the right art style in your Midjourney prompts will help you get better results.

Written by: Milan K

Published on: April 19, 2023

Generating amazing images in Midjourney has a lot to do with the words you use in your prompts. In most cases, people aren't able to generate the exact images they imagine because they don't specify the art style accurately enough in their prompts.

That's why today I want to focus on the different art styles that you can use in your Midjourney prompts to get better results.

What I'm going to share in this article won't all be art styles and movements, but also some cool keywords that you can use to generate great images. For example, the keyword "Pixar" isn't a specific art style but it will help generate an image in a certain way.

I will also provide you with some good prompt examples for some of the art styles I mention in this article.

Before I start talking about the different art styles you can use in Midjourney, I want to note that each image shared in this article was made using the latest iteration of the AI model at the time of writing this article. In other words, they were made with Midjourney v5.

15 Popular Midjourney Art Styles

I'm going to start by sharing some of the more popular styles people use in Midjourney. These are styles that I often come across in the public Discord server for this AI image generation tool.

Steampunk is a style that's often used in Midjourney. It represents a subgenre of science fiction that represents retro-futuristic technology. This art style showcases how people in the 19th century imagined the future. Let me show you an example.

/imagine steampunk steam-powered vehicle resembling a flying car

With the prompt above, I was able to generate the following images.

Psychedelic art represents a style that doesn't need much introduction. It works great if you want to generate mind-bending and abstract images. Here is a prompt that I used to generate images in this style.

/imagine psychedelic art showing an eye staring into the window to a person's soul, repetitive patterns, trippy, weird, abstract, ethereal, otherworldly --ar 16:9

Glitch art is a style that will almost always provide you with incredible results in Midjourney. This is a style that incorporates errors or glitches for aesthetic purposes. It is meant to appear as if the image has been corrupted in some way. Here's an example.

/imagine glitch art portrait of a young woman that is half human and half machine in a dystopian world

That fourth image looks like it could be a movie poster. Glitch art made in Midjourney never ceases to amaze me!

Watercolor art represents one of the oldest styles in the world. It has been used since the Paleolithic times. If you want to create something in Midjourney that looks like a painting instead of a digital image, you should try using the watercolor art keywords. Here is an example.

/imagine watercolor art painting showing the great pyramid opening up to release an ancient spacecraft that was hidden underneath it for millenia

This is certainly an abstract image, and I like the way it turned out even though it's not how I initially imagined it.

Minimalism is another popular Midjourney art style. I think that this style doesn't need an introduction, so I won't give you a prompt example of it. You can simply include keywords such as "minimalism" and "minimalistic art" in your prompts. However, I will give you an example of a minimalist style called flat design .

Even if you're not familiar with the term "flat design" you have seen countless examples of it on the internet. It's a style that is mostly used in graphical user interfaces. Bright colors, crisp edges, and an overall clean aesthetic characterize this style. Here's an example.

/imagine flat design poster promoting a Chinese restaurant that focuses on food delivery, clean, bright colors, takeout, food delivery --ar 2:3

I really like the third and fourth images here. If you don't know, I want to mention that as of right now you can't instruct Midjourney to generate the text you want in its images. This feature will get added to a future iteration of the model. For now, you can edit the text using software like Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

Cyberpunk is a similar art style to steampunk in the sense that it focuses on a futuristic setting. This style emphasizes a combination of lowlife and high-tech. It works great on both portraits and landscape images.

/imagine cyberpunk portrait of a young woman wearing cheap torn clothing and holding a weapon in her hand with a futuristic city in the background, dark and detailed, intricate, ultra realistic, headshot, 8k, octane render

I added some keywords to this prompt that will help it appear more photorealistic, such as "intricate" and "octane render". I think it worked since the third image here is especially realistic.

Vaporwave is a visual art style that I see people often using to make images in Midjourney. It's a style that usually incorporates early Internet imagery. I love to use this style to generate landscape images of futuristic cities. Let me show you an example.

/imagine Vaporwave style image of a neon futuristic city, purple, dark blue, bright green, neon --ar 16:9

I included some colors here that I wanted to see. This is a cool trick that will help increase the chances of generating the images that you want.

If you spend any amount of time in the public Midjourney Discord server, you'll quickly see a lot of people generating images in an anime art style . Here is an example of what you can create in an anime style.

/imagine an anime style portrait of a man dressed in a business suit holding a mystical book radiating a bright green light, fantasy, ethereal, wondrous --ar 2:3

Surrealism is a cultural movement and art style that originated in the early 20th century. One of the major figures of surrealism is the legendary artist Salvador Dali. If you want to create an image in this art style that resembles the works of Salvador Dali, you can include his name in the prompt.

/imagine surrealism art style oil painting in the style of Salvador Dali showing how the unconscious mind perceives the evolution of life on Earth --ar 16:9

Art Deco is an art style that initially became popular in France during the 1910s before being widely used in the United States in the following few decades. This style emphasizes bold geometry and rich colors. Here is an example of an image generated in this style.

/imagine art deco style image showing the interior of a hotel filled with luxury items, photorealistic, rich colors, 1920s luxury --ar 16:9

Abstract art is often used to create cool images in Midjourney. I like creating abstract art, as it's one of the few styles where less is more. Sometimes, you only need a few words in your prompt to create abstract art. I'll show you the following example.

/imagine abstract art painting displaying cognitive dissonance

Impressionism is one of the most recognized art styles in history. It was a 19th-century art movement developed by some of the most notable French artists, including Monet, Paul Cezanne, and Edgar Degas.

/imagine impressionism style painting showing a person staring at ancient ruins --ar 16:9

Cave painting is one of my favorite art styles in Midjourney. I especially like to use it to create something I'd like to see on an episode of Ancient Aliens. Apart from cave painting, you can also use the keyword "ancient art" to get similar results. Here is a prompt I wrote for this art style.

/imagine cave painting showing an alien spacecraft flying over a primitive civilization, ancient art --ar 16:9

Hyperrealism represents an art style that started to become popular in the 1970s. It's a style that aims to resemble a high-resolution photograph. You can effectively use it in Midjourney for amazing results.

/imagine hyperrealism style close-up portrait of a very old but charming man, noticable wrinkles on his face, his eyes filled with knowledge and experience --ar 2:3

From what I’ve observed in the public Midjourney Discord server, I’d say that these are the most popular art styles used by people who interact with this AI model. However, there are additional styles that I’d like to mention since using them produces truly beautiful results.

18 More Popular Midjourney Art Styles

I talked about what I'd say are the most popular Midjourney art styles in the previous section of the article. I'm now going to mention additional art styles (and keywords that will help you get a certain result from your prompts), but this time I won't show you the end result. Instead, I want you to experiment with these styles in Midjourney.

Here are 18 more popular art styles people use in Midjourney:

Atompunk - A distinct and bright-colored art style that depicts the future as people from the 1950s and 1960s imagined it.

Pencil Drawing - You can make images generated in Midjourney look like they were drawn with a pencil by including the “pencil drawing” keyword in your prompt.

Fractalism - Do you like making abstract images that include repetitive patterns? If so, you can mention the fractalism style in your prompts.

Crayon Art - It’s always fun to look at art drawn with crayons. Use this keyword to get amazing results in Midjourney.

Chalk Art - If you use the chalk art style in your prompts, you should specify the color of the chalk. It can be a specific color or multicolored. If you want white chalk to be used in your images, it’s best to make sure the background is dark green.

Afrofuturism - The Afrofuturism visual art style is centered on Black history and culture. It contains elements of advanced technology, futurism, and science fiction.

Cubism - Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso are famous for this avant-garde art movement. It involves analyzing the subject in works of art, breaking it up into parts, and reassembling them in an abstract form.

2D Illustration - Two-dimensional art includes shapes that are completely flat. They comprise only sides and corners.

Pixar - Although it’s not a specific art style, Pixar movies have a certain flair to them. That’s why I recommend you use the “Pixar” or “Pixar style” keywords in prompts that will make images look like they’re straight from a 3D animated movie.

Gothic - The Gothic art style was developed during the 12th century and spread all across Western Europe.

Polaroid - If you want your images to feature a retro photography aesthetic, you should use “polaroid” related keywords in your prompts.

Art Nouveau - This is an art style that was popular from the 1890s to World War I, and is inspired by plant forms and nature.

Pop Art - Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein are the most prominent figures of the pop art movement. It became popular during the 1950s and is characterized by imagery from popular and mass culture.

Coloring Book - Make your images appear like it’s straight out of a coloring book by using this keyword in your prompts.

Fantasy - If you want to include fantasy elements in images you generate, simply include the “fantasy” or “fantasy art” keywords in your prompts. You can also use the “dark fantasy” keyword for a darker aesthetic.

Low Poly - Low poly art is also called low polygon art. It's a style that is supposed to be used to create images that favor straightforward geometry and colors over life-like art. It's mainly used for illustrations, video game design, and animation.

Pixel Art - Pixel art is associated with low-resolution graphics from the age of 8-bit and 16-bit computers but it remains a popular style to this day. Midjourney can produce awesome pixel art.

It would be impossible for me to list every art style and movement in existence, so I'm certainly missing a lot here. My intent was to focus on the most popular art styles I've seen people using in Midjourney.

I advise that you continue researching and learning about different styles and keywords you can incorporate into your prompts.

Make Better Midjourney Images With These Art Styles

There is no doubt that using the art styles mentioned in this article when you're writing Midjourney prompts will help you get better results.

What's great about Midjourney is that you use your creativity to mix and match different styles and see what type of results you'll get. AI image generation models like Midjourney enable you to easily express your creativity as much as possible.

Once you enter a prompt, an image will usually be generated within 60 seconds. That means that you can experiment with all of the art styles I mentioned in this article in less than an hour.

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About Milan K

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Database of 16,000 Artists Used to Train Midjourney AI, Including 6-Year-Old Child, Garners Criticism

By Karen K. Ho

Karen K. Ho

Senior Writer, ARTnews

For many, a new year includes resolutions to do better and build better habits. For Midjourney , the start of 2024 meant having to deal with a circulating list of artists whose work the company used to train its generative artificial intelligence program.

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Judge says major ai companies did not profit unfairly from artists' work.

Midjourney developers caught discussing laundering, and creating a database of Artists (who have been dehumanized to styles) to train Midjourney off of. This has been submitted into evidence for the lawsuit. Prompt engineers, your “skills” are not yours https://t.co/wAhsNjt5Kz pic.twitter.com/EBvySMQC0P — Jon Lam #CreateDontScrape (@JonLamArt) December 31, 2023

The 24-page list of artists’ names used by Midjourney as the training foundation for its AI image generator (Exhibit J) includes modern and contemporary blue-chip names,as well as commercially successfully illustrators for companies like Hasbro and Nintendo. Notable artists include Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, Gerhard Richter, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Damien Hirst, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Paul Signac, Norman Rockwell, Paul Cézanne, Banksy, Walt Disney, and Vincent van Gogh.

Midjourney’s dataset also includes artists who contributed art to the popular trading card game Magic the Gathering, including Hyan Tran, a six-year-old child and one-time art contributor who participated in a fundraiser for the Seattle Children’s Hospital in 2021 .

Phil Foglio encouraged other artists to search the list to see if their names were included and to seek legal representation if they did not already have a lawyer.

Access to the Google file was soon restricted, but a version has been uploaded to the Internet Archive .

The list of 16,000 artists was included as part of a lawsuit amendment to a class-action complaint targeted at Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt and the submission of 455-pages of supplementary evidence filed on November 29 last year.

The amendment was filed after a judge in California federal court dismissed several claims brought forth by a group of artists against Midjourney and DeviantArt on October 30.

The class-action copyright lawsuit was first filed almost a year ago in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California.

Last September, the US Copyright Review Board decided that an image generated using Midjourney’s software could not be copyright due to how it was produced. Jason M. Allen’s image had garnered the $750 top prize in the digital category for art at the Colorado State Fair in 2022. The win went viral online, but prompted intense worry and anxiety among artists about the future of their careers.

Concern about artworks being scraped without permission and used to train AI image generators also prompted researchers from the University of Chicago to create a digital tool for artists to help “poison” massive image sets and destabilize text-to-image outputs.

At publication time, Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment from ARTnews .

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An Essential Guide to the Top Midjourney AI Art Galleries for Visual Inspiration

As an AI artist, one of the most valuable resources available is the vast gallery of images produced by Midjourney users. With the right approach, these creative works can become a treasure trove of inspiration and knowledge.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the top 5 Midjourney galleries, analyzing the key features and use cases of each. You’ll learn how to ethically browse these image collections to enhance your artistic abilities, spark new ideas, and responsibly create your own unique masterpieces with Midjourney.

Introduction to Midjourney Galleries

First, let‘s quickly recap what the Midjourney gallery is and why it matters:

What is the Midjourney Gallery?

The Midjourney gallery consists of every image generated through the platform from text prompts. Each time a user creates an image, Midjourney adds it to this public repository.

Why Browse the Galleries?

Here are some of the top reasons to explore the Midjourney gallery ecosystem:

• Discover New Inspiration – Find fresh creative directions from the diverse range of images.
• Understand Midjourney’s Capabilities – See the full scope of concepts and styles Midjourney can generate.
• Learn Prompt Patterns – Reverse engineer prompts to adapt ideas without plagiarizing.
• Utilize Seeds – Generate variations on images you like using the seed ID.

Let‘s now dive deeper into the origins and key capabilities of the top 5 Midjourney galleries:

1. Official Midjourney Showcase

As Midjourney‘s flagship public gallery, the Official Showcase is the perfect place to start exploring the world of AI art.

The Showcase debuted in tandem with Midjourney‘s launch in July 2021 as a way to display the platform‘s potential. It has since ballooned to over 1.3 million images and continues growing daily.

Key Features

The Showcase provides a clean and intuitive interface to browse Midjourney creations:

• Slick grid layout with infinite scrolling
• Filters by categories like "Trending" or "Abstraction"
• View image info and prompts by hovering over thumbnails
• Diverse range highlighted in editorial collections

With its refined curation and hand-picked selections, the Official Showcase excels as an initial orientation to Midjourney‘s capabilities. The broad categories and viral images provide a representative overview.

As Elise Swopes, a professional AI artist, described:

“The Midjourney Showcase offers an accessible entry point to encounter the diversity and wonder of AI art. I like browsing the Trending and Collections sections to quickly grasp the big picture then dig into niche genres. It’s a launchpad for my own creative journeys."

Limitations

The main downsides of the Showcase are the inability to copy prompts and the lack of advanced search options. This makes it less suited for reverse engineering images compared to other galleries.

Overall, the Official Showcase remains one of the premier starting points for Midjourney exploration and inspiration.

2. Midjourney Community Feed

The Midjourney Community Feed contains every public image generated by Midjourney users. It provides the most comprehensive look at Midjourney‘s true capabilities.

The Community Feed launched in January 2022 as a premium feature exclusive to paid Midjourney subscribers. This unlocked the full archive of over 25 million public images.

Power users flock to the Community Feed for its robust set of features:

• Scrollable feed of all public user images
• Advanced search with filters for likes, dates, etc
• View detailed image metadata and prompts
• One-click copying for any image‘s prompt
• Grid view to rapidly scan creations

With its sheer breadth of content and metadata access, the Community Feed enables more advanced investigation and education:

• Discover new prompt styles by experienced users
• Study subtle prompt variations that alter image outcomes
• Research themes and seed images to emulate
• Compile prompt ingredients for your own hybrid ideas

As Reddit user secondaidkit analyzed:

"The Community Feed let me analyze prompt patterns from talented Midjourney photographers. I picked up tips like adding ‘–ar 9:16‘ for portrait shots. This level of learning simply isn‘t possible just from the Showcase."

The main drawbacks include the paid subscription requirement and potential overwhelm from the firehose of unfiltered images.

But for serious Midjourney artists, the Community Feed provides unparalleled access for reverse engineering and prompt development.

3. Midjourney Subreddit r/Midjourney

With over 200,000 members, the r/Midjourney subreddit has emerged as the top community forum for Midjourney discussion and inspiration.

The r/Midjourney subreddit formed in July 2021 following Midjourney‘s initial beta launch. Early adopters shared their creations and feedback which fueled growth.

As a Reddit community, r/Midjourney operates similarly to other subreddits:

• Primarily image posts to showcase Midjourney art
• Upvote system surfaces most popular images
• Comment threads provide context on prompts and techniques

The Midjourney subreddit excels as a source of curated inspiration:

• Upvotes pre-filter the highest quality images
• Quickly scan for eye-catching images and concepts
• Participate in discussions around improving prompts

As one Redditor u/mooncrkit explained:

"I love browsing r/Midjourney‘s top weekly posts to catch trends and see what‘s inspiring people. It‘s like having a curated magazine of the best AI art tailored to your interests."

Since it relies on user sharing, r/Midjourney has inconsistent prompt info. Reposts and duplicates are also common.

The Midjourney subreddit works well for visual inspiration but falls short for prompt research.

4. DeviantArt Midjourney Gallery

With over 60 million monthly users, DeviantArt is firmly established as the top social platform for sharing artwork. It has become a hotbed for Midjourney creations.

DeviantArt gained traction in the early 2000s as an online artist community. The introduction of AI art over the past two years has further accelerated sharing.

Core DeviantArt features that enable Midjourney gallery exploration include:

• Searching "Midjourney" to isolate relevant images
• Tag system to find related images
• Liking, commenting, and sharing
• Watching artists and collections

DeviantArt excels more as a social experience for Midjourney art:

• Passionate artist community exchanges tips
• Images compiled into themed collections
• Discussions on improving prompts and techniques

As DeviantArt user futurevibes described:

"I love getting together with my DeviantArt friends and browsing each other‘s newest Midjourney creations. We share ideas to improve our prompts and exchange inspiration."

The lack of prompt metadata and moderation results in low quality galleries:

• Prompts are often inaccurate or completely absent
• Rampant reposting without credit
• Difficult to find breadth amidst low quality

DeviantArt provides community but falls short for prompting research purposes.

5. ArtStation Midjourney Gallery

ArtStation has emerged as the leading platform for digital artists to publish professional portfolios and sell prints.

ArtStation launched in 2014 as a portfolio site catering to game, film, and media artists. It has since expanded into digital art prints.

Key aspects of ArtStation for Midjourney include:

• Search filter isolating Midjourney created images
• Professional artist galleries and portfolios
• High-resolution downloads available
• Prints, merch, and commercial licensing

ArtStation offers a more curated look at high quality, printable Midjourney art:

• Striking, polished collections and portfolios
• Commercial licensing for marketing materials
• Photorealistic quality for decorative prints

As ArtStation creator Alumx described:

"I license my Midjourney pieces through ArtStation to companies who want professionally created marketing assets without paying for a human artist."

The focus on printables results in a less diverse gallery:

• Very scarce image metadata and prompts
• Smaller range of styles and genres
• Curation limits breadth of concepts

ArtStation provides a commercial slant on Midjourney images but lacks data for prompt research.

Key Tips for Responsibly Browsing Midjourney Galleries

Now that you‘re familiar with the top galleries, here are some best practices to utilize them most effectively:

• Start with the Official Showcase and Community Feed to grasp capabilities
• Use Subreddit and DeviantArt for styles and concepts you want to emulate
• Analyze common prompt patterns but avoid directly copying prompts
• Utilize seeds rather than full prompts to legally generate similar images
• Take notes on themes, styles, and techniques to inspire your unique creations

Transforming the inspiration sparked by Midjourney galleries into your own original art requires skill and care:

• Identify specific visual elements that inspire you, not whole images
• Catalog moods, color schemes, and compositions to guide your work
• Start prompts from scratch using your own descriptions and seed images

As Midjourney engineer Lisa Lu cautioned:

"The gallery can provide creative direction, but avoid letting it limit your own imagination. Your most original ideas come from within."

Key Questions About Responsible Use of Midjourney Galleries

Let‘s wrap up this guide by addressing some frequent questions about properly utilizing these resources:

How Can I Access All the Images I‘ve Created?

Your personal Midjourney image gallery is available by logging into the website or mobile app. You can browse small thumbnails and click to expand.

For easy bulk access, try downloading one of the available third-party gallery archiving tools for Midjourney.

Are My Images Public or Private by Default?

Midjourney‘s Showcase and Community Feed galleries are always public. But you can opt into "Stealth Mode" in Account Settings to privatize your personal gallery.

Who Owns the Copyright on Midjourney Images?

According to Midjourney‘s Terms of Service, users own the copyright and IP for any images they generate. However, you cannot legally copyright AI-generated works under current US copyright law.

So while you own the image itself, you cannot stop others from using Midjourney to create similar images. Handle this limitation with integrity by focusing on your own originality.

What Are Some Alternatives to the Top Midjourney Galleries?

Beyond the 5 covered, some other notable Midjourney galleries include:

• Nightcafe : AI art community
• Big Sleep : Gallery focused on Big Sleep AI
• Lexica : Algorithmic art collections

I hope this guide provided a comprehensive orientation to the top Midjourney AI art galleries for sparking your creative imagination. We covered the origins, capabilities, use cases, and limitations of each major option.

Remember tobrowse ethically by using these image collections for inspiration rather than plagiarizing prompt combinations. If we all contribute our own artistic perspectives, Midjourney‘s amazing potential can be multiplied even further.

The future possibilities from generative AI remain boundless. I can‘t wait to see the innovative directions you explore from here using this knowledge!

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How to Use Midjourney to Create AI Art

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Key Takeaways

• Get started with Midjourney by downloading Discord and creating an account.
• Sign up for Midjourney through Discord, choose a subscription plan, and create prompts.
• Use variations, parameters, and remixes to get different results, before downloading your AI-generated images for creative use.

Midjourney is a rare AI image generator that requires a different sign-up process than what's expected. So to help you cut through the confusion, we have made a simple guide to help you get started using Midjourney.

Step 1: Download Discord Before Creating AI Art With Discord

Midjourney is hosted on a platform called Discord, where different online communities get together under what are called "servers". The Midjourney server is where you can create AI images and see what others are doing too.

Head to the Discord Download page and click the correct download link for your operating system. It's available as a mobile application, but to start with, download the desktop version for either Mac or Windows. Follow the installation instructions to finish setting it up.

Once installed, head to the Discord Registration page to make an account for yourself. After you've done this, you'll be ready to sign up for Midjourney.

If you need some more help with Discord, then don’t worry, you can learn how to get started with Discord here .

Step 2: Sign Up to Midjourney to Start Creating AI Art

Navigate to the Midjourney website and click on Join the Beta at the bottom-right.

Next, click Accept Invite . You will be prompted to open the Discord app by your browser, but if this doesn't happen, you can click Continue to Discord .

Once Discord opens, click on one of the Newbies rooms. You can find them listed under the heading Newcomer Rooms in the navigation panel on the left.

In the text box at the bottom of the screen, type the command /subscribe and hit enter twice on the keyboard.

You will receive a message from the Midjourney Bot with a link to Manage Account . Click this link to open a page with all the available subscription plans. Finally, click the Subscribe button on the plan you want to buy.

While it's no longer free to try, Midjourney is still worth subscribing to . A basic plan at $10 a month offers you enough server time to create hundreds of images with the option to cancel the subscription at any time.

Step 3: How to Create a Prompt Using Midjourney

Head back to one of the Newcomer Rooms named Newbies, followed by a number. Any one of these will do.

Because there are usually a lot of people generating images on these channels, it makes it difficult to keep track of your work. So to avoid this, we reccomend opening a private chat with the Midjourney Bot. You can use the chat to generate all your images in one convenient place.

To open a private chat, click on the Midjourney Bot name wherever you can see it on the channel. Then in the message box that appears, type Hi and hit enter.

Once you have the private chat open, you’re ready to begin. To get Midjourney to generate an image, you'll want to run a Discord command. All you have to do is type /imagine and then begin describing whatever it is you would like Midjourney to create.

Midjourney will produce four images for each prompt. If you like one of them, you can use the U buttons to separate the image from the set. The top left and right images are U1 and U2, and the bottom left and right images are U3 and U4.

There are all kinds of AI art prompt ideas worth trying out, so let your imagination run wild.

Step 4: Making Variations in Your AI Art on Midjourney

Underneath each set of images are buttons labeled V1 to V4 . They match the images in the set, starting from the top left and right (V1 and V2) and moving down to the bottom left and right images (V3 and V4).

When you click one of these buttons, Midjourney will create a variation of that image. This is useful for spinning-out an idea until you get an image that you really like.

As it is, this function is like a game of roulette where the output is random. So the way to gain control over variations is to turn on the Remix setting.

In the text box, type the command /remix and hit enter twice. You will see a message confirming the Remix mode has been turned on. Now, when you hit the V button on an image, you will see the Remix Prompt dialogue.

You can use this to make changes to the original prompt. Feel free to add new subjects, change colors or alter any other part of the image. Because this is still a variation, Midjourney will make sure to produce an image close in composition to the original.

Step 5: How to Get the Best Results With Your AI Art on Midjourney

To really get the most out of Midjourney, you can include a number of different parameters in your prompt. These parameters are like tags that you put at the end of your prompt to tell Midjourney to behave differently than it normally would.

How to Change the Aspect Ratio in Your Midjourney AI Art

One of the most useful commands to know when you're just starting out is the one for aspect ratio, which uses the tag --ar . With this parameter, you can change the image from the default square shape to landscape or portrait.

In the image below, we added --ar 2:1 to the end of the prompt, which creates a nice wide-angle image of the scene.

Here's the full prompt:

• /imagine Illustration of Tokyo in the rain, people walking with clear umbrellas, moody, daytime --ar 2:1

You can learn about the different aspect ratios in Midjourney and get to know which ratio is used for profile pictures, desktop images, printing images and more.

How to Upscale Your AI Images in Midjourney

Upscaling your image to the highest resolution is another essential feature worth understanding.

First, select the image you want to upscale using the U buttons, just as we did in step 3. Once the image is separated from the set, click the Upscale (Subtle) button. If you're using an earlier version of Midjourney, the button will be labeled Upscale (4x) .

Using Other Parameters in Midjourney

There are a huge number of different parameters that you can use to adjust Midjourney's end results, such as the chaos, style, and weird parameters. Each of these can have an immense impact on your AI-generated images.

You can explore the full list of paramters in the official Midjourney documentation .

Step 6: How to Download Your AI-Generated Image From Midjourney

When you're ready to download an image, separate the image from the set using the U buttons, then click on the image to preview it.

In the bottom left corner of the image, click Open in Browser . In the browser, you can right-click on the image and select Save Image As .

Step 7: How to Make Use of Your AI Art

Now that you're up and running with Midjourney, there are plenty of ways to put the AI image generator to good use.

Creating custom desktop images with Midjourney is the perfect excuse to create AI art and a great way to put it on display.

Another fun way to use Midjourney is to create AI self-portraits to replace your profile picture. It uses some of the more advanced features on offer, like uploading your own image as a reference for the AI model.

You can dabble in typography, too, and use Midjourney to create text . Or combine all these techniques together to create the perfect logo using Midjourney .

There are a lot of AI image generators available out there, but Midjourney may just be the most advanced option available to anybody who cares about AI art. Midjourney's results can sometimes be nothing short of breathtaking.

Getting started with Midjourney isn’t as difficult as it initially seems. Midjourney is a powerful tool with a serious suite of features, and once you start to play with it, you'll soon be creating your very own masterpieces.

• Digital Art

• Aug 31, 2023

Midjourney: A Comprehensive Guide to AI-Generated Artwork Creation

Updated: Sep 1, 2023

Discover the power of Midjourney, a generative AI tool for creating stunning artwork. This in-depth guide will walk you through getting started, writing effective prompts, and optimizing your usage of this fascinating technology.

An Introduction to Midjourney

Midjourney is a text-to-image generator that leverages cutting-edge AI to turn language prompts into photorealistic images. Despite only launching in 2022, it has quickly become one of the premier AI art platforms alongside giants like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion.

So how does it work exactly? Midjourney relies on a combination of natural language processing and generative adversarial networks. First, it analyzes your text prompt to understand the core concepts. It then gradually transforms random noise into an image through a process known as diffusion, which involves adding and subtracting noise in steps.

The key benefit of Midjourney is that it removes the need for artistic skills. As long as you can describe an idea in writing, the AI will handle the rest. Of course, crafting effective prompts is an art form unto itself.

Getting Started with Midjourney in 4 Steps

Ready to dive in? Here's how to get up and running with Midjourney fast:

1. Join Discord

Midjourney is only accessible through Discord right now. So first, sign up for a free Discord account if you don't already have one. You can use Discord on just about any device.

2. Join the Midjourney Server

Head to the Midjourney website and click "Join the Beta." This will redirect you to an invite link for the Midjourney Discord server. Accept the invite to gain access.

3. Choose a Subscription

4. Start Creating!

Once subscribed, you can start generating images through text prompts in any channel. Share your creations in #showcase .

Crafting Your First Midjourney Prompt

The key to success is writing effective prompts. Here are some tips for your first one:

Keep it short and concrete. Aim for 20-50 words.

Use vivid, emotive descriptors.

Avoid ambiguity. Be as direct and specific as possible.

Give Midjourney creative freedom when appropriate.

Here's an example starter prompt:

This gives Midjourney clear direction while allowing room for interpretation. Feel free to tweak it and make it your own!

Refining Your Image

Midjourney provides tools to further refine your generated image. Here are some options:

Upscaling (U1-U4): Generates a larger, more detailed version.

Variations (V1-V4): Creates different renditions with the same style/composition.

Reroll (🔄): Reruns the prompt to get new results.

Edit Prompt: Change the text and re-generate the image.

Don't be afraid to experiment! The more you use Midjourney, the better you'll get at coaxing out your intended creation.

Advanced Prompt Syntax and Settings

As you become more experienced with Midjourney, you can start fine-tuning your prompts using parameters, weights, and settings:

Parameters: Add conditions to alter the output (e.g. --ar 2:3 for aspect ratio).

Weights (::): Stress important keywords over others (e.g. space::ship).

Negative Prompts: Use exclusions like --no text .

Settings: Customize options like quality and aspect ratios.

Take time to learn all the advanced syntax Midjourney supports. Small tweaks can make a big difference!

Tips for Prompt Engineering

With the basics covered, here are some pro techniques:

Do test runs to see how Midjourney interprets words.

Use a prompt generator for inspiration.

Add the --creative flag for more outside-the-box results.

Chain prompts together for narratives and sequences.

Leverage image prompts along with text.

Try different styles and artists for aesthetic variety.

Ask for feedback to improve over time.

Prompt engineering is an iterative process. The more you experiment, the better you'll get!

We've only scratched the surface of Midjourney's capabilities in this guide. As you spend more time with the platform, you'll discover just how versatile and powerful AI art generation can be.

The key is learning what prompts work best for your desired outcomes. Be patient, persist through failures, and always keep iterating. With practice, you'll be able to produce images beyond your wildest imagination.

So what are you waiting for? It's time to unleash your creativity with Midjourney!

Dreaming of an AI-driven transformation? Engage with Codersarts AI today and let's co-create the future of tech, one prototype at a time.

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• Generative AI
• Live Streams

30 Midjourney Styles to Spark Your Creativity

Last Update: Nov 25, 2023

Whether you like it or not, Midjourney is the biggest wave to hit the art world that we’ve seen in our lifetimes. I love building art with Midjourney. It allows me to be creative without spending hours building it or having the natural talent to make it.

I don’t claim to be an artist or try to pawn these works off as my own. I’m just having fun creating cool stuff and sharing it. If you also love doing this stuff, here are some cool art styles to try out. I’ve included the prompts used to generate them. I’ve broken them up into traditional and non-traditional styles.

Traditional Styles

These are some common styles that have been around way longer than Midjourney. Many of these styles are being revived with the rise of Midjourney.

Art Nouveau

Midjourney prompt:.

Create a visually stunning Art Nouveau-inspired poster featuring a sinuous, nature-themed design. Incorporate intricate, flowing lines and ornate details. Use soft, pastel colors and depict a harmonious blend of organic elements like vines, flowers, and elegant female figures. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Design a luxurious Art Deco-style cocktail lounge scene from the 1920s. Emphasize sleek, geometric shapes, and use bold, contrasting colors such as black, gold, and deep red. Showcase opulent furnishings, sunburst motifs, and stylized architecture –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Compose a minimalist artwork that evokes a sense of calm and simplicity. Create a monochromatic image with a single focal point, emphasizing clean lines and negative space. Use muted colors and focus on the beauty of everyday objects or landscapes through simplicity. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Craft a Bauhaus-inspired poster that celebrates the union of art and functionality. Incorporate bold primary colors and geometric shapes. Design a modernist building or furniture piece with a clear emphasis on form following function. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Capture the eerie and majestic atmosphere of a Gothic cathedral at twilight. Use dramatic lighting to emphasize the intricate stone carvings, pointed arches, and towering spires. Create an image that conveys a sense of mystery and grandeur. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Design a geometric pattern that plays with symmetry and repetition. Experiment with a limited color palette and explore how various shapes and angles can create intricate and visually captivating compositions. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Recreate a classical Greek or Roman sculpture in a digital format. Pay meticulous attention to the human form, proportions, and drapery. Use soft, warm lighting to highlight the sculpture’s elegance and grace –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Compose a Baroque-style painting featuring dynamic movement and dramatic lighting. Create a scene with swirling forms, elaborate ornamentation, and rich, contrasting colors. Emphasize the emotional intensity and theatricality of the subject. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Avant-garde

Push the boundaries of artistic expression with an avant-garde piece that challenges conventional norms. Experiment with unconventional materials, abstract shapes, and non-linear compositions to create a thought-provoking and boundary-pushing artwork. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Craft a traditional Japanese Ukiyo-E woodblock print that captures the beauty of nature or the everyday life of the Edo period. Utilize bold outlines, vibrant colors, and fine details to depict scenes of landscapes, kabuki actors, or courtesans in a timeless style. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Non Traditional Art Styles

These styles are a little different from the traditional styles and many of them are spawned by Midjourney and other generative AI tools. Check these out.

Techno-Organic

Create a stunning Techno-Organic sculpture that seamlessly blends natural elements like vines, leaves, or flowers with futuristic technology. Imagine a robotic tree with circuit board branches or a metal sculpture covered in organic growth. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Cybernetic Surrealism

Craft a Cybernetic Surrealism-inspired digital artwork that transports viewers to a dreamlike world where surreal and cybernetic elements collide. Think of a scene where melting clocks meet neon-lit skyscrapers, creating a surreal cyberpunk dreamscape. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Digital Expressionism

Explore the world of Digital Expressionism by creating an emotionally charged digital painting that delves into the complex relationship between humans and technology. Use pixelated brushstrokes and shifting colors to convey the fusion of emotions and digital experiences. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Cryptic Minimalism

Design a visually striking Cryptic Minimalism artwork that appears simple at first glance but hides intricate cryptographic symbols or codes within its clean lines and shapes. Challenge viewers to decipher the hidden messages. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Bioluminescent Abstraction

Produce a Bioluminescent Abstraction artwork that harnesses light-emitting materials to craft an abstract composition reminiscent of bioluminescent organisms. Create a piece that emits a soft glow in the dark, evoking a sense of wonder. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Nanotechnology Nouveau

Imagine an ornate Nanotechnology Nouveau sculpture that combines the delicate, organic forms of Art Nouveau with the precision and intricacy of nanoscale structures. Craft a piece that blurs the line between art and science. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Quantum Dreamscape

Dive into the world of quantum physics and create a Quantum Dreamscape artwork that explores the mysterious and surreal aspects of quantum phenomena. Envision a scene with floating particles, entangled objects, and shimmering wave functions. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Synthetic Naturalism

Challenge the definition of ‘natural’ by crafting a Synthetic Naturalism painting that incorporates synthetic materials like plastics and tech waste into a traditional landscape. Create a lifelike depiction of nature that raises questions about the environment. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Circuitry Sculpturalism

Sculpt a three-dimensional masterpiece in the style of Circuitry Sculpturalism, celebrating the aesthetic beauty of electronic components. Imagine a futuristic artifact or alien relic made entirely of circuit boards, wires, and microchips. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Glitch Pop Art

Put a digital twist on a famous pop culture icon by creating a Glitch Pop Art piece that distorts and pixelates it. Think of taking a classic artwork or familiar image and giving it a glitchy, malfunctioning appearance to challenge viewers’ perceptions. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Cosmic Surrealism

Compose a Cosmic Surrealism artwork that transports viewers to a dreamlike cosmic realm. Imagine celestial bodies, surreal landscapes, and bizarre extraterrestrial creatures in a single captivating scene. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Retro-Futurism

Design a Retro-Futurism-inspired poster that captures the essence of a ‘futuristic’ world as envisioned in the 1950s. Incorporate sleek rocket ships, hovercars, and shiny chrome cityscapes. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Steampunk Fantasy

Create a Steampunk Fantasy illustration featuring an adventurous character navigating a fantastical, steam-powered world filled with airships, clockwork creatures, and Victorian attire. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Bio-Cybernetic Fusion

Craft an artwork that explores the concept of Bio-Cybernetic Fusion. Depict a unique creature or being with a blend of organic and cybernetic features, showcasing the seamless integration of both. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Pixelated Realism

Produce a Pixelated Realism piece that portrays a familiar scene or object with pixel-perfect precision. Embrace the limitations of pixel art while creating a highly detailed and realistic image. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Time-Lapse Impressionism

Experiment with Time-Lapse Impressionism to depict the changing seasons in a single artwork. Paint a landscape that transitions from spring to winter, showcasing the passage of time. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Create a Neo-Cubist artwork that reimagines a well-known object or person through fragmented perspectives and geometric shapes. Push the boundaries of perception with your interpretation. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Psychedelic Surrealism

Dive into the world of Psychedelic Surrealism by crafting an artwork that transports viewers into a surreal, kaleidoscopic dreamscape filled with vivid colors, strange creatures, and swirling patterns. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Retro Anime Aesthetics

Design a Retro Anime Aesthetics poster that captures the nostalgia of ’80s and ’90s anime. Create dynamic characters, intense action scenes, and a retro color palette reminiscent of the era. –v 5.2 –ar 16:9 –stylize 900

Post-Apocalyptic Realism

These are some of my favorite styles, and I have plenty more to share. So bookmark this website and come back for more.

Also join the AI Wizards Community to see more cool art, tips, and more.

Stay up to date on the latest in Computer Vision and AI. Get notified when I post new articles!

Published: Nov 25, 2023 by Jeremy Morgan . Contact me before republishing this content.

* This blog post is a summary of this video.

Beginner's Guide to Using Mid-Journey's Groundbreaking AI Art Generator

Table of contents, what is mid-journey and how does it work, step-by-step tutorial for new users, tips for communicating effectively with mid-journey, advanced features and customization options.

• Conclusion and Additional Resources

Mid-journey is an independent research company based out of San Francisco that has developed an AI art generator system. The system takes text prompts from users and generates corresponding images through machine learning algorithms.

The mid-journey AI aims to explore new creative mediums and expand the imaginative capabilities of humans. In essence, whatever users can describe in text, the AI attempts to translate into visual form, whether that's photorealistic images, abstract art, sketches, or a variety of other styles.

Mid-Journey's Capabilities

Mid-journey is capable of generating images across a wide range of styles and artistic genres based on the prompts it receives. This includes photorealistic images, abstract art, sketches, anime art, paintings in different styles, and more. The AI uses machine learning to continuously improve its image generation capabilities.

How Mid-Journey Interprets Text Prompts

Since mid-journey does not actually understand human language, it relies on analyzing text prompts statistically to try and discern what users want generated. Using certain keywords and phrases that describe artistic styles, colors, composition, etc. can help the AI better interpret prompts. Essentially, the mid-journey AI tries to translate text into the machine language and representations used internally for image generation. Providing more descriptive detail and relevant keywords generally produces better results.

Getting started with mid-journey requires creating an account and joining the Discord server where images are generated. The process is relatively straightforward, but involves a few steps for new users.

Notably, mid-journey is currently still in beta, so access requires joining a waitlist before being invited to create an account and join the Discord.

Creating a Mid-Journey Account

Visit the midjourney.com website and join the waitlist to request an account. You'll need to provide an email address. Once invited off the waitlist, create your account through the emailed link. Accounts are currently free, with limited generations available before needing to subscribe for $10/month.

Navigating the Mid-Journey Discord Server

Nearly all interaction with mid-journey happens through the Discord server. Accept the Terms of Service and explore channels like #newbies to see examples. To generate images, use bot commands in Discord. Type /imagine to open a prompt bar for entering text descriptions. The AI will generate 4 image variations to choose from.

Generating Your First Image

Try generating your first AI image with a simple prompt like "a happy person standing in a flower field". Add details, styles, or keywords as desired. Upscale and tweak generations with additional commands. Share your creations and provide feedback to improve the AI.

Since mid-journey relies entirely on text prompts to generate images, learning how to craft descriptive prompts is key to producing desired results.

Certain techniques, like specifying aspect ratios and artistic styles through keywords, can help guide the AI's image generation process.

Specifying Aspect Ratios

Include aspect ratio for intended medium, like "16:9" for horizontal thumbnails vs "9:16" for vertical phone backgrounds.

Using Artistic Style Keywords

Prompt prefixes like "impressionist landscape" or suffixes like "pop art style" inject stylistic intent. Reference specific artists too.

Emulating Famous Artists and Genres

Terms like "cubism style", "art nouveau", "baroque", or artist names like "Picasso" and "Van Gogh" can guide aesthetic style.

Beyond basic text-to-image generation, mid-journey offers more advanced options for customizing and tweaking results.

Photographic post-processing effects, animation styles, and an ever-growing library of artistic genres help users achieve their creative vision.

Photography Effects and Lenses

Emulate camera lenses with "wide angle" or "telephoto", and techniques like "long exposure" and "tilt shift". Post-process with "vibrant colors" and "reduced glare".

Anime and Animation Styles

Generate anime art mimicking popular shows like "Dragon Ball Z style" or "Death Note style". Simple terms like "animation style" also work.

Trending Styles and Genres

New genres emerge daily as creators prompt exciting blends. Remain active in the Midjourney community to stay on top of trends.

Mid-journey presents groundbreaking, generative AI capabilities for producing stunning visual media. While still an emerging technology, the potential applications already appear vast.

With an engaged community constantly pushing boundaries, mid-journey promises to become an increasingly versatile creative assistant for all manner of visual arts and design.

Q: Is a Mid-Journey account free to use? A: Yes, new users get 25 free generations to start. After that, a paid subscription of $10 per month is required for ongoing private access.

Q: Can I edit the images Mid-Journey generates? A: Yes, you can download Mid-Journey images and edit them further in graphic design software like Photoshop or Canva.

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Beginner's Guide to Using Midjourney's Groundbreaking AI Art Generator

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'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?

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When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form .

How to use Midjourney to generate amazing images and art

Looking for a logo for your business, artwork for a project, or an image for a report? One way to get a helping hand is to turn to an online AI tool . You can choose from an array of sites. 

How to use: Craiyon AI   |  Bing Image Creator  |  DALL-E 2  |  Stable Diffusion

But one service that offers truly impressive results is Midjourney. With this AI image creator, you describe the type of image you want to by entering text. In return, the site delivers four high-quality renderings.

How Midjourney works

Initially, Midjourney offered a free trial through which you could test the service by requesting a limited number of images. Unfortunately, the site ended the free trial for now, with the CEO blaming the move on a surge of new users. That leaves you with no option but to sign up for one of the paid subscription plans .

Also: How to use Bing Image Creator (and why it's better than DALL-E 2)

A basic plan will run you $10 a month or $96 a year, a standard plan is $30 a month or $288 a year, and a pro plan is $60 a month or $576 a year. Each tier ups the speed of the responses and offers other benefits. To get a taste of Midjourney, you may want to start with the basic plan to see how it well it works for you.

How to get started using Midjourney

Getting started with Midjourney can be confusing as you have to jump through a couple of hoops. To kick things off, go to the Midjourney website and click the link at the bottom for Join the beta . 

You're then taken to the website for Discord, which provides the server on which the responses are generated. If necessary, click the button for Continue to Discord . At the sign in window, click the Register link. Enter your email address, type a username and password, and select your date of birth. Click Continue.

Create an account

2. Join the Midjourney community

You can then log in with your account. Close any initial windows or messages that pop up. Instead, click the button on the left side bar for Explore public servers . Among the featured communities, look for Midjourney or type Midjourney in the search field to find it. Select Midjourney to access it. Then click the button at the top for Join Midjourney .

Access the Midjourney community

3. Join a newbie group

After you've joined, the left sidebar will display newbie groups under Newcomer rooms. Click one of the rooms to access it. Scroll up and down the page to see the images that the Midjourney AI bot has created for other users.

View the messages in a newbie group.

4. Subscribe to a paid plan

With the free trial no longer available, you'll have to subscribe to a paid plan before you can try out the Midjourney service. In the Message field at the bottom of the screen, type /subscribe and press Enter. Click the button for  Open subscription page .

Click the button to go to the subscription page.

At the subscription page, choose either yearly billing or monthly billing. Click the Subscribe button for the plan you want and then fill out the payment form. After the payment goes through, return to the Discord page and the newbie group you had accessed.

Choose the subcription plan you want.

5. Describe the image you need

You can now finally describe the image you want created. In the Message field at the bottom, type "/imagine" or just type "/" and then choose imagine from the menu. A prompt field then appears. 

In that field, type the description of the image you need generated. Press enter. Wait at least a few seconds for the images to be fully rendered. By default, Midjourney creates four images for each request, with each one appearing in a small thumbnail.

Describe the image you want, and the AI renders four different ones.

6. Upscale images

Under the images are buttons -- U1, U2, U3, and U4 along with V1, V2, V3, and V4. The U buttons are for upscaling the image. The numbers correspond to the four different images by row. The first image is 1, the image to its right is 2, the first image on the next row is 3, and the image to its right is 4. Click the U button for the image you wish to upscale to see the effect. Scroll down the screen to see the upscaled image.

Ask the AI to upscale one of the images.

7. Alter images

The V buttons are used to make changes to a specific image. Maybe there's a particular image you like among the four but want to see how it can be enhanced or improved. Click the V button for that image. Scroll down the screen until you see another series of four images, each one displaying a slightly different version of the image you selected.

Ask the AI to revise one of the images.

You can also play with an image that's been upscaled. Under the image, click the Make variations button to generate revisions to the image. Click the Light Upscale Redo to upscale the image slightly using the current version of Midjourney. Click the Beta Upscale Redo to upscale the image even higher using the latest beta version. Click the Web button to display the image at a larger size in a separate window.

Use different commands to further revise the image.

8. Choose your image

With the larger image, click the magnifying glass cursor to zoom in on the image. Right-click on the image, and you can use your browser's controls to save it, copy it, or email it.

View the image in a separate window where you can save it.

9. Return to the Discord page and the newbie group

There are a variety of commands you can run at the bottom field to view and manage your interactions. Click in the field and type "/". Scroll down the list to see all the available commands.

View the different commands.

10. (Optional) Cancel your account

Finally, should you decide not to continue with Midjourney, you can cancel your subscription. Sign into your Midjourney account page. Click the Manage link next to Plan details for your plan and then select Cancel Plan. Confirm the cancellation.

Cancel your subscription.

More on AI tools

Midjourney's ai-image generator website is now officially open to everyone - for free, the best email hosting services of 2024: expert tested, i uncovered 8 cool ways to use lidar on an iphone and ipad.

How-To Geek

How to create synthetic ai art with midjourney.

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Midjourney no longer offers a free trial , and the company hasn't said whether it will ever offer a free trial again in the future.

Quick Links

What is midjourney, how to use midjourney beta, key takeaways.

Go to the Midjourney web page, click “Join Beta,” and join the Midjourney Discord server. Enter one of the newcomer rooms and type /prompt (your prompt here) to generate an image using AI.

AI-based image generators like DALL-E 2 have boomed in popularity. People love to enter bizarre prompts and see what gets spit out. Midjourney is one of the more advanced tools for this, and you can try it now.

Before we talk about Midjourney, let's start with DALL-E 2, the one you may have heard about. DALL-E 2 sits at the high end of these AI-based image generator tools. It can create completely brand new images from a simple text prompt. You enter "a robot eating a taco," and it creates an image depicting a robot eating a taco.

At the more basic level is Craiyon , formerly known as "DALL-E mini." This is a free web tool that anyone can use, but it's not nearly as sophisticated as DALL-E 2. The results are often strange and somewhat creepy, but it's still very fun to play with.

Related: The Best AI Image Generators You Can Use Right Now

Midjourney sits somewhere in the middle of DALL-E 2 and Craiyon. It also uses AI and machine learning to generate images based on text prompts. The results are usually quite good, but not as mind-blowing as DALL-E 2.

The only thing you need to use the Midjourney Beta is a Discord account. That's where you will give text prompts to the Midjourney bot. You can sign up for a free account on Discord's website . After that, you can use Discord in a web browser or download the app for Windows , Mac , Linux , Android , and iPhone .

UPDATE: 3/30/23

Once you're all set up with Discord, we'll head over to the Midjourney website and select "Join the Beta."

This will take you to Discord, where we can select "Accept Invite."

We're in. There are a couple of things to know about the beta. You start with a free trial that includes around 25 prompts. After that, you can buy a full membership if you'd like.

To get started, go to one of the "Newcomer Rooms" channels in the sidebar. We'll be using "#newbies-42," but there are a number of others.

In the text box, enter

and then type your prompt and submit it.

You can watch the progress as the four images are created.

When the images are finished, they'll be displayed in a new message. Now you have some additional options.

• U = Upscale: Creates a larger version of the image.
• V = Variation: Creates a new image based on the one you selected.
• Refresh: Get four new images from the same prompt.

The results will be delivered in a new message just like before, and you'll have some new options to make more variations or upscale it to the max.

If at any time you'd like to save the images, simply select the image and tap the download icon on mobile or "Open Original" on desktop to see the full-size image to save.

That's pretty much all there is to the Midjourney Beta! Simply type

and you can follow it with a prompt. Keep in mind certain words aren't allowed, but it's mostly fair game, and you can see what others are creating. There's some pretty crazy AI out there these days, go have fun!

Related: How to Run Stable Diffusion on Your PC to Generate AI Images

To generate images on your own PC, try Stable Diffusion . Unlike most AI image generators, it's open source, and you can download and run it on your own hardware.

• Cutting Edge

How to Make AI-Generated Images and Art with Midjourney

Are AI-generated images the new frontier of design for brands and businesses? Maybe. In this article, I'll walk you through creating your first AI-generated piece of art using Midjourney. I'll also highlight some best practices for getting the results you want.

If you're fascinated by AI-generated art and want to know how to make your own, you've come to the right place. While there are several AI image generators available to the general public, in this article I'll be focusing on how to use Midjourney.

What Is Midjourney?

• Getting Started with Midjourney
• How to Write an AI Art Prompt
• How to Use Midjourney Art (Copyright Matters)

This way to start creating AI-empowered art!👇

In the company's own words , "Midjourney is an independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species." Which is a very philosophical way of saying that it is an artificial intelligence powered art generator.

Using text input, Midjourney renders images that range from photorealistic and stunning to surreal and unsettling to anything in between. At the time of writing this, Midjourney is still in beta and is therefore changing and improving as the developers process and incorporate user feedback .

So, how do you use Midjourney?

How to Get Started Using Midjourney

There are a few hurdles to jump through before you can start creating AI-generated art with Midjourney, but don't worry, none of them are particularly difficult or even all that time consuming. It took me about five minutes to get set up the first time I used it.

Here are the steps I took:

Step 1: Join the Midjourney Discord Server

If you navigate to midjourney.com , you'll notice that it's a pretty sparse site and there actually isn't a "generator" anywhere on the site. That's because the Midjourney bot is hosted on Discord.

Note: If you don't have a Discord account, you'll want to set that up as your Step 1A before joining the Midjourney server.

You can join the server by clicking either "Join the beta" or "Sign in" on the Midjourney homepage. Doing so will prompt you to sign in to your Discord account if you're not already logged in and authorize the Midjourney Bot's access to your Discord username, avatar, banner, email address, and member info for servers you belong to.

Step 2: Review the Rules and Accept the Terms of Service

Once you're in the server, you can head over to either the Getting Started channel or the Rules channel for a run down of the community guidelines and how the server works. Make sure to accept the terms of service while you're at it, or you won't be allowed to use the bot.

One of the most important tidbits you'll get from these channels is that all new members receive a trial run of about 25 queries. "About 25" may sound vague, but Midjourney membership are actually built around GPU minutes rather than actual images rendered because some queries, upscales, and variations take more GPU time than others.

This trial period gives you a chance to try out AI image generation and learn the ropes before committing to a paid plan. And considering that generating AI images can be a tricky art to master (more on the AI prompt writing in a moment), you really do want the practice time.

Speaking of practicing, I'm sure you want to start making AI images already. There are two main ways you can use the Midjourney bot: In one of the Newbie channels or in your own Discord server.

Step 3: Add the Midjourney Bot to Your Server (Optional)

If you plan to collaborate with other people on your team or just don't want to deal with the clutter and noise of a busy server like the Midjourney server, you can add the Midjourney bot to your own Discord server.

To do so, click on the Midjourney bot's profile pic in any channel where the bot is active (like one of the Newbie channels). You'll see a quick breakdown of the / commands for the bot as well as a button with the text "Add to Server."

Click the button. In a new pop-up window, you'll be asked to give the Midjourney Bot access to your server. Choose the server you want to add the bot to from the drop-down menu, then hit Continue.

Navigate to the server you chose. You can now use the bot commands to start generating images. Type /imagine to initiate the prompt command, then add your query.

Step 4: Write Your Prompt then Let Midjourney Do Its Thing

To create an image, you'll need to use the /imagine command. If you've properly initiated the command, it will look like this:

In the editable text box to the right of the word "prompt," you can enter your query for the bot. For this example, I entered the following query: "australian shepherd with heterochromia, photorealistic, portrait style."

The more detail you give the bot, the closer the results should be to what you're looking for. Midjourney will then generate four results based on your prompt.

These were my results from this query:

Underneath the results, you have the option to request an upscale or variant of any of the four images. Upscaling will give you higher resolution version of the same image; variant will give your four variations of the same image.

Step 5: Download Your Midjourney Image

When you're happy with the resolution and variation, all that's left to do is download your image.

There are two main ways to download a Midjourney image.

1) Open Original in Discord

You can download right from your Discord feed. Click on the variant you want to download and then click on the "Open original" text in the bottom left corner.

This will open the image in a tab on your web browser where you'll have the option to save it as a high resolution, lossless .webp file.

If you want to download the image as a PNG instead, there's an option for that, too.

2) Download from Your Midjourney Profile

Sign into your profile on the Midjourney website and navigate to your home page.

You'll see all of your images generated on this page and be able to view them individually. When you click into the image, you can see the query, any associated tags, resolution details, the parent image, and options for sharing and downloading.

Click on the three dot menu underneath the image to access the "Save image" option.

How to Write an AI Art Prompt for the Best Results

AI-generated art should be a collaboration between an artificial intelligence and the querier. There are two roles being filled here: the role of creative director (that's you and your human brain) and the role of design executor (the AI generating the image). And like any creative director, you're going to need specific communication skills to make sure your designer understands your idea well enough to bring it to life.

So, how do you communicate with an AI bot?

Midjourney has a helpful Tips for Text Prompts article that I would recommend reviewing as a first place to start.

Here are some other best practices that I've found through my own trial and error as well as speaking with my team mate, Eric Lu (Co-Founder at Kapwing and the mind behind the AI stock image library, Cosmic Basin ):

1) Define size parameters

Midjourney defaults all images to a 1:1 aspect ratio (aka, a square).

If you need a different size and don't want to crop or resize your image , you'll need to specify that to the bot in language the bot understands. For the Midjourney bot, that means using the --ar tag in your query.

In the example above, I added "--ar 16:9" to my query to get a horizontal image.

You can also specify specific pixel widths and heights using the --w and --h tags, however Midjourney advices that your results might not be as consistent as --ar is currently better supported. To get exact pixel dimensions with the aspect ratio tag, use reducable fractions.

2) Study the Community Showcase

The Community Showcase on Midjourney is a great place to go for inspiration. People are making truly incredibly art with this tool. But it's also quite useful for learning how to talk to the bot.

You can hover over any of the images in the showcase to see what the user wrote for their prompt.

I recommend finding images you like with elements you want to replicate in your own results and then reading through the queries and taking notes on how different users arrived at those results.

3) Name specific artists and/or art styles

If you have a specific style in mind, think about which words are used to describe that art style, like modern, detailed, surreal, photorealistic, etc.

If you want the art to emulate a certain artist, add "by Artist Name" to your query.

For this example, I wanted an impressionist piece in the style of Claude Monet, so the prompt was: "woman walking through a rose garden at sunset by claude monet, romantic."

4) Try to use common words and phrases

Midjourney is able to create such an incredible diversity of images because of how AI training works. Essentially, the bot associates specific words and phrases with images it was shown during training.

It will be more effective when you include words in your query that are visually well-defined. The more images that would show up in a Google search, the better chances that Midjourney will accurately interpret your prompt.

Take for example my prompt of "australian shepherd with heterochromia, photorealistic, portrait style." If you look at the results, none of these images show a dog with heterochromia — a condition that causes an animal or person to have two different colored eyes.

A probable reason for this is that the word "heterochromia" isn't visually well-defined. There aren't enough images of that online for Midjourney to be able to iterate on it.

If you run into this problem, you can try describing what the word means instead of using the word itself. For example, I adjusted my prompt to read "australian shepherd with different colored eyes, photorealistic, portrait style" instead.

My results: this variant with one blue eye and one hazel eye, which is basically the most classic presentation of heterochromia out there.

Using the above best practices and simply getting familiar with the Midjourney AI and how it interprets prompts will have you on the fast track to creating stunning AI-generated art.

Do You Own the Images Created with Midjourney?

Copyright and licensing plays an important role when creative assets are involved. AI-generated assets are no different. Well, they're a little different, but you still need to make sure your licensing is in order before you start posting your new images all over your website and social media .

If you want to ensure that you do not violate copyright when using an AI Image generator, try Tess , the first properly-licensed AI Image Generator.

Midjourney offers three tiers of licensing available for assets created with their bot.

1) Licensing available to free users

For non-paid members (trial users fall under this category), Midjourney grants the user rights under the Creative Commons Noncommercial 4.0 Attribution International License .

This license only covers noncommercial reproduction, sharing, and adaptation of the assets created with Midjourney. According to the Creative Commons, "noncommercial" is defined as "not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation."

That means that if you're intending to use Midjourney to create images for your website or an ad campaign, you cannot use any images you created during your free trial until and unless you pay for a membership.

Speaking of which...

2) Licensing available to paid members

There are three paid Midjourney plans that you can subscribe to: Basic, Standard, and Corporate.

Both the Basic and the Standard plan include restricted commercial use rights for assets created in Midjourney. These are good options if you plan to use your AI artwork for your business or personal brand.

3) Licensing available to corporate users

The final licensing option Midjourney offers is a commercial use license for their Corporate subscription holders. If a user is the owner or employee of a company that grosses over $1MM a year (and they intend to use their Midjourney plan to make commercial assets for said company), they must purchase a Corporate plan.

Most individuals and many brands will be covered with the commercial licensing under either the Basic or Standard plans.

For more resourced made by creators for creators, visit our Resources Library for more articles like this one or check out our YouTube channel .

Curious if you can use Midjourney to make thumbnails for your YouTube channel? Check out our recent experiment and decide for yourself. ↓

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Everything you wanted to know about MidJourney

What is MidJourney, and how does it compare to DALL·E? Learn all about the latest image-to-text AI that creates stunning results.

Summary: MidJourney is a text-to-image AI like DALL·E, with a specialism in ‘pretty’ images. You use it by messaging a bot in the chat app, Discord – it’s not a web application, but it doesn’t require any programming either. It’s free to try, or costs $10/month for a basic plan after that. It’s really good!

What is MidJourney?

Just like DALL·E 2 or Craiyon (formerly DALL·E Mini), MidJourney is a text-to-image AI that generates gorgeous visuals based on your text prompts.

While DALL·E is designed to generate anything you can imagine – including the mundane or ugly -Midjourney has a bias towards creating painterly, aesthetically-pleasing images by default. Given the choice, MidJourney prefers to create images with complimentary colours, artistic use of light and shadow, sharp details, and composition with satisfying symmetry or perspective.

In the words of its founder, “we just want it to be easy to use – and we want the pictures to look good.”

So, let’s look at how that works in practice!

How do you use MidJourney?

Unlike DALL·E 2 or DALL·E Mini, Midjourney doesn’t work as a web app. Nor is there any coding required.

Instead, you use it in a popular chat app called Discord, by ‘talking to’ a bot. (Discord, for those unfamiliar, is very similar to Slack, and just like Slack, it works both in your browser and in a standalone app, on both desktop and mobile. )

As a free/trial user, this is especially chaotic, because you interact with the bot in a busy public chatroom, where everyone else is ALSO doing the same thing!

However, it’s also a pretty fun way to get started: you can see the exact prompts everyone else is trying – and their results – live and unfiltered!

Once you become a paid user (from just $10 a month) you’ll be able to DM the bot in a private conversation, making for a far calmer experience. (You can still keep an eye on the public channels to see what’s going on, or participate in challenges, if you’re feeling nosy.)

As you’d expect, generating images consists of typing in a sentence and seeing what happens.

Generating images takes about 2x longer than DALL·E – it takes about 50 seconds to reveal your initial thumbnails.

However, unlike DALL·E, you can watch as the AI gradually generates your images, from initial blurry colours, to high-definition thumbnails. It’s rather hypnotic, and only increases the sense of delicious anticipation.

Unlike DALL·E, there’s then a second step: the initial thumbnails are only 256px (though you can download all four as a grid!) at which point you can upscale your favourite to full quality, which costs another credit.

This upscaling process takes an additional minute or so to complete – you’ll also be able to watch it happen as Midjourney fills in the details.

Just like DALL·E, you can also create ‘variations’ of any MJ image where you’d like to see some similar outputs. (Note, this is only possible only using the UI beneath a previous generation – you can’t upload your own image to vary.)

Requesting a variation generates four options, rather than DALL-E’s three.

Interestingly, variations are less computationally intensive than generating an image from text – on a $10 Basic Plan, for example, you could generate 666 variations (for 2664 total thumbnails) , but only 200 text prompts.

What kind of images does MidJourney create?

Here’s the most important thing to know – if you’ve heard of Midjourney, but aren’t that familiar with it, it might be a lot more capable than you’re aware of. Previously, Midjourney has been heavily associated with a certain kind of image – highly ornate, almost ‘fractal’ pictures.

Although they’re certainly very striking, they share a certain alien style that gives them that signature ‘AI generated look.’ But Midjourney’s model is now on ‘version 3’ – and it’s more powerful and adaptable than ever.

Not photos: but photorealistic

Midjourney avoids generating straight-up ‘everyday’ photography, but it can create beautiful images that are 90% or more of the way there: like a very detailed piece of art, a convincing piece of CGI, or perhaps a real photograph that’s been heavily Photoshopped to create an artistic effect.

In particular, Midjourney’s tendency to generate ultra-sharp images adds to the overall feeling of veracity.

Prompt-wise, Midjourney understands all the technical photography jargon you’d expect from using DALL·E (or consulting the Prompt Book), happily recreating the implied vibe you’re after, whether that’s a particular lens, film stock or lighting setup.

Creating 2D art, painting and illustrations with MidJourney

Just like DALL·E, MidJourney is more than capable of taking inspiration from a wide variety of different art mediums, styles, and historic artists. From ornate ‘paintings’ to blocky, abstract illustrations, analogue sketches to digital

Mocking up 3D visual art with MidJourney

Finally, like DALL·E, MidJourney can be used to develop convincing concept art for 3D artwork. The aforementioned ultra-sharp photography style really shines at any scale, whether it’s monumental interiors or intricate details.

Midjourney vs DALL·E: visual strengths and weaknesses

Head-to-head with DALL·E, MidJourney is often more aesthetically pleasing. MidJourney is essentially built to be ‘pretty by default’, so even for vaguely defined prompts, it delivers much more reliably ‘aesthetic’ images. Here’s ‘girl discovers meaning of life’ for example:

The drawback is, even given more specific prompts, Midjourney has a tendency to ignore the requested style in favour of something ‘better looking.’

Challenged to illustrate ‘anxious thoughts’ in an ‘outsider art’ style, we can see that DALL-E’s result is much closer to the scribbly aesthetic we’d stereotypically expect, while Midjourney prefers to deliver something more composed and less ‘outsider-y.’

Similarly, asked to generate a ‘pixel art pineapple’, Midjourney can’t resist adding curves, details or anthropomorphic features, while DALL·E follows instructions to the letter:

For the casual user, this bias can actually be an advantage. Midjourney is a fantastic option for rapidly generating a coherent set of imagery, like stock illustrations to accompany a series of articles, as long as you’re happy for it to call the aesthetic shots.

Let’s imagine we’re working on a project dealing with ‘mental health in the workplace.’ From a single prompt, MidJourney’s generations are all very consistent, so on our homepage, they’d go together really well!

Even across different prompts, there are enduring aesthetic similarities which wouldn’t be miles apart stylistically.

Now compare the above images DALL·E’s responses to the same prompts: they are much more wide-ranging, as if we’d asked different designers to create each image, or they were taken from different magazines.

With more styles to choose from, that means we’re more likely to find what we’re looking for – but they don’t go particularly well together. And if we ran a similar prompt again, we might see something very different again!

Alas, not only does MidJourney’s model make your results consistent, it’s making everyone’s results consistent. Below, we can see an image I recently generated and shared on Twitter. I was struck by the creative response to the prompt ‘last thoughts of a dying man’- until two other people in the community shared recent images they’d made…

Clearly, the model has some crowd-pleasing techniques up its sleeve, ready to satisfy a whole range of requests. (Is… the model… hacking us ?)

As MidJourney images are used more widely, these aesthetics might start to feel ‘played out.’ But on the other hand, Midjourney might develop new tricks before that happens. Or perhaps we’ll always find a figure in front of a portal irresistible…

In short, the challenge with MidJourney is no in creating a beautiful image – that’s remarkably easy – but to push the model to create a distinct image with a novel style.

Content rules and limitations

While still precluding adult imagery of gory violence and sexual content, Midjourney has far fewer content limitations than DALL·E. There are no rules against creating images that depict ‘violence’ broadly or fantastically, illness and disease, political content, or depictions of public figures.

Here are some examples of images that would be blocked by DALL·E, for example:

So, if you’re trying to design sci-fi super-soldiers, create illustrative work to accompany health content, design punchy political images, or just generate some good old-fashioned fan art, you’ll be wanting to choose MidJourney every time.

The examples above also illustrate just how censorious DALL·E’s restrictions currently are. (In OpenAI’s defence, because MidJourney doesn’t generate photorealistic images, there is a reduced risk of misuse through fakery and misinformation.)

Everything is saved – and everything is public

DALL·E only makes your 50 most recent generations recoverable, unless you manually save individual images, which are then stored in a big, unsearchable bucket. (Something of a pet peeve!)

But MidJourney saves every thumbnail and HD upscale by default , in your own personal archive, which you can also search by prompt. That makes it impossible to lose any work, and easy to find it again. Much better!

One potential downside for the privacy-minded: by default, every prompt and generation is public , shared in a mighty gallery. (Currently, only paid members can browse this content.) And of course, if you’re a free/trial user, you’ll be posting your prompts directly in a public chatroom. If you want to opt out – perhaps you’re working on a commercial project – it’ll cost you $50/month.

However, the benefits of being able to consult the huge archive are huge: it’s a brilliant way to investigate what styles exist, and stumble across new ideas constantly. For instance, you could search for techniques (like ‘pastels’), artists (like ‘da Vinci’), or subjects (like ‘sneakers’). You can also bookmark others’ work for later reference, and of course, time spent exploring the archive of prior creations means you’ll burn through your job credits a little slower.

Other MidJourney-only techniques

MidJourney offers a few clever features that DALL·E doesn’t.

Creating landscape and portrait images

This is super-straightforward, you just add something like the following to the prompt: –ar 2:1 , to create an image that’s twice as wide as it is tall. e.g:

Dark oil painting of a horse king --ar 2:1

Some common aspect ratios are are:

16:9 (widescreen desktop, phone in landscape) 9:16 (vertical phone, Instagram story) 4:3 (typical ‘thumbnail’ or landscape photo) 4:5 (the most ‘portrait’ an image can be in the Instagram feed)

Landscape images are great for panoramic views, of course, but also for anything ‘cinematic’, including action scenes! Portrait compositions work well for posters, full-body portraits and vertiginous subjects like skyscrapers.

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Adding ‘image prompts’

Just start the prompt with the URL of an image, and Midjourney will attempt to use ‘the style’ of that image to influence the output. (Note this is not the same as varying it or ‘editing it’ directly –it will not take the subject of the image and apply your prompt to it.)

For example, if we start with the image on the left, with the word ‘dog’ attached, we get the following:

In my experience, this is pretty difficult to control! It seems easier to just prompt with text. That said, with perseverance you might get some interesting effects, and it would be interesting to document the results – there is not much published study of this feature.

Light upscaling

This is easier to visualise than explain. Basically, The default ‘regular upscaling’ adds detail to the HD version, so a painting of a field of flowers will contain more blades of grass, petals and so on.

Conversely, ‘light upscaling’ will keep the same number of brushstrokes and simply makes the existing detail bigger.

Why Midjourney is better than DALL-E

Appearance: Midjourney’s images are usually more aesthetically pleasing than DALL·E, and the model is still adaptable and responsive to stylistic prompts. That makes it a great tool if you want to generate a lot of pleasant images quickly – like your own archive of stylised ‘stock illustrations’ to accompany articles, videos or intangible services – without needing to fine-tune the prompt too closely.

Ease of use: With your choice of aspect ratio, you can transform an idea to a Instagram story, Youtube thumbnail or book cover much faster. And the public gallery, with hundreds of thousands of images to be inspired by, makes it easy to check if your prompt will be understood before you type it in, and find thousands of new ideas ideas.

Managing your work: With automatic archiving, it’s impossible to lose the images you’ve paid to make. It also saves all your thumbnails in a 2×2 grid, so you don’t need to worry about saving every image individually.

Mobile use: The Discord app works much better on mobile than the DALL·E website, making it easier to generate on-the-go (or in bed, for that crazy 3am prompt idea you just dreamed about.)

Visible generation process: The animated generation process is not just fun to watch, it also makes Midjourney better for workshops or presentations where you’d otherwise experience ‘dead air’ as DALL-E’s grey progress bar trundles across the screen.

Unlimited use: For $30/month, MidJourney offers an all-you-can-eat mode, although eventually your speed of generation will be slowed down.

No watermark: unlike DALL·E, the bottom 20px of each image is unadorned by a ‘signature.’

Cheaper, if you want one ‘hero’ output per prompt: If you’re likely to only one want one / ‘the best’ output per prompt, then Midjourney gives you 100 prompts (and 100 upscales)for $10, or 10¢ per image. (DALL·E gives you 115 prompts for $15 which is 13¢ per image.)

Why DALL·E is better than Midjourney

Flexibility: Trained on (one assumes) a much larger range of images, DALL·E is capable of delivering a wider range of visual styles.

Uniqueness: As a result, you’re much more likely to craft a surprising or amusing result, or create a never-before-seen image. It’s less likely the image will seem ‘AI-like’. You can also feel more confident that other users haven’t generated very similar images.

Responsiveness: Because DALL-E’s model is less opinionated, it’s more responsive to style prompts, especially if that style is less immediately beautiful – it won’t try to overrule your opinion. Therefore, you’re more likely to get a precise reaction to a specific request, like pixel art.

Raw speed: From initial prompt to full HD download takes as little 20 seconds, vs Midjourney’s 120.

Photography: DALL·E is also more adept at creating realistic, ‘normal’ photographs that wouldn’t be out of place in a magazine or corporate website.

Image editing: DALL·E also offers powerful tools that Midjourney doesn’t: in-painting, uncropping, and varying image uploads are crucial to the more inventive uses of AI art we’re currently seeing.

A real web app: With its own minimal web interface, you can work directly with DALL·E – the confusion of installing Discord is likely to be off-putting to some kinds of users.

Privacy: With all your generations private by default, it’s better for those working on personal or sensitive commercial projects.

Sharing URLs: DALL·E lets you turn a creation into a shareable URL, so it’s easy to send a link.

Cheaper if you want bulk images: if you might hypothetically need multiple images from the same prompt (e.g: all four photos of ‘a lemur on a lemon’ for an upcoming… OK, I have no idea) then $15 buys you 115 prompts x 4 generations = 460 HD images, for 3.3c/image. In comparison, Midjourney’s $10 basic plan gives you roughly 200 ‘jobs’, but prompting and upscaling each cost 1 job – the maximally efficient ratio would be for 40 prompts and 160 upscales, or 6.25c/image.

Why not both?

One powerful technique is to create original images in Midjourney, then import them to DALL·E for variation and in-painting. And there are other great image-editing tools that work well with both.

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DALL·E vs Midjourney, head-to-head

Ready to try it? Visit midjourney.com to get started.

The DALL·E 2 Prompt Book

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Midjourney’s enthralling AI art generator goes live for everyone

One of the more evocative platforms for AI art, Midjourney, has now opened to everyone in beta mode.

This is the second time that the platform has opened to all as a beta. On July 18, the platform opened up for 24 hours. In an email sent out to Midjourney beta testers on Tuesday, however, founder David Holz wrote that the “Midjourney beta is now open to everyone.”

Midjourney is one of the more interesting entrants in the small but growing field of AI art , which takes user-generated queries, runs them through an AI algorithm, and lets the algorithm pull from its source images and apply various artistic techniques to the resulting image. Midjourney’s images look somewhat similar in quality to those outputted by Latitude’s Voyage , though Latitude charges $14.99 for 20 image credits as part of its paid plan.

For now, beta users will receive about 25 free images as part of the Midjourney beta. After that you’ll have to pay either $10/mo for 200 images per month, or a standard membership of $30 per month for unlimited use. Midjourney will allow corporate use of the generated images for a special enterprise membership. Otherwise, the images belong to you.

On Sept. 29, the “godfather” of AI art, DALL-E, also went “free” on a similar, credit-based plan. DALL-E, however, seems far more literal than Midjourney. If you’re hoping for a more photo-realistic prompt, stick with DALL-E; however, if you prefer more artistic creations, Midjourney seems like the better bet. Meta also showed off Make-A-Video , which takes AI art and interpolates them to create GIFs and small video clips.

There’s only one catch with Midjourney: prompts and the resulting images are generated via Discord, the social networking/chat app. To be part of Midjourney, you’ll need a free Discord membership. (PCWorld’s beginner’s guide to Discord can help you get settled if you’re new to the service.) The following link will sign you up for the Midjourney service: discord.gg/midjourney .

While Midjourney does provide a user manual , using it boils down to this. Within Discord, you’ll need to join one of the quickly growing number of “#newbies” channels — it doesn’t matter which one. Once inside the channel, simply type “/imagine” and then the text prompt. Remember, even though there’s AI generating the output, guiding the style is up to you. It’s worth scrolling up and down the various “newbies” channels to see what prompts generate which responses, and which styles you can apply.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Some results will amaze you; others will disappoint. There’s a bit of luck in it all. I wasn’t nearly as impressed with my “a kraken appears from beneath San Francisco Bay,” but the resulting image from “a castle on an asteroid floating through space” at the top of this story is pretty awesome.

Each time you enter a request, you’ll receive an almost immediate result, in a matrix of four images that are all variations of the theme. Below each image you’ll also see several buttons. Each button has a meaning: the “U” buttons upscale a particular image, for 1 to 4; the “V” buttons ask the AI to provide a variation the theme on the particular image. The circular arrow is a “do over” for the entire array. Be careful! Simply tapping each button generates the command, and charges you an image credit in return.

Don’t be discouraged by the sheer volume of requests, either. Because of the nature of Discord, you’ll see your query and results quickly zoom off the page. To solve this problem, click the inbox item in the upper right-hand corner. (It actually looks an RJ45 Ethernet port on a computer.) That will open up a list of the relevant messages from the Midjourney bot. Click the “jump” button to take you to the actual message in Discord, where you can interact with the image.

You can also find your own personal galley of images simply by visiting your “home page” within Midjourney . You can click the small “ellipsis” menu next to the image to “open [it] in Discord.” That will open Discord and allow you to apply the modifications above.

How to get more Midjourney image credits for free

By default, all of the prompts that you generate are “fast,” or immediate. You can get more image credits, for “free,” by switching to the “/relax” command. This puts your request in a queue, rather than processing it immediately. It’s unclear how long this additional queue time actually is, but Midjourney won’t charge you a credit for using it.

Unfortunately, this loophole only works as a subscriber. On the other hand, if you do end up signing up for the $10/mo plan and get hooked, but can’t justify spending $30 per month on cool images, you might try this option!

This story was updated in Sept. 29 to add details about DALL-E and Make-A-Video.

Author: Mark Hachman , Senior Editor, PCWorld

Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.

Recent stories by Mark Hachman:

• Google’s search business officially ruled as illegal monopoly
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How to use Midjourney

Create anything you can imagine when you know how to use Midjourney

You need to know how to use Midjourney if you want to create some of the most exciting AI art possible. As a self-described “independent research lab exploring new mediums of thought and expanding the imaginative powers of the human species,” Midjourney lets users create anything they can imagine from just text and can now also create text prompts from existing images using the "describe" function. 

You might be a little confused as to how to go about using Midjourney to create those awesome AI-generated pieces of art you see — this may be because you need to use Discord instead of a standalone app or webpage. Don't worry though, it's all simple enough to do, and this guide is here to show you how.

Before we get started, make sure you sign up on Midjourney’s website , then sign into Discord . We’ll talk you through the rest, so get your imagination whirring because if you can picture it and describe it, Midjourney can probably draw it.

Midjourney used to other a free limited trial but now it is accepting paid members only, membership starts at $10 for the basic plan, which will get you around 200 image generations a month.  

How to use Midjourney 

How to use midjourney — text to image.

1. Once you’ve joined the Midjourney Discord select a server to join , to start it’s best to select a “Newbie” server (these servers are recommended for casual users as they help users get to grips with the AI generation process).

2. Select the chat box at the bottom , and type "/imagine" , then click the Imagine command .

3. Type in the prompt for the art you wish to create (the more detail the better) and hit enter . 

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4. Wait a few moments for the bot to work and keep an eye on the chat where it will be posted.  

5.  To produce variations or upscale an image, select t he buttons below the images — V (and then the number of the photo) for variation and U for upscale. 

How to use Midjourney  — Image to text

1. In the same room Select the chat box at the bottom, and type "/describe", then click the describe command.

2. Attach the image that you want to be described and hit enter .

3. Wait a few moments for the bot to work and keep an eye on the chat where it will be posted. You can now tweak this prompt or copy and paste it to see if the AI creates something similar. 

Simple, right? Da Vinci never had it this easy. Make sure to remember, however, that Midjourney is currently only in Beta so don’t expect it to be perfect every single time. Being able to see everyone else’s creations is a great source of inspiration and the Midjourney community even has daily themes to experiment with. 

If you're interested in creating AI art on your phone learn how to use Starry AI on iOS, learn everything you need to know about Discord and how to link discord to PlayStation . If you'd rather have a go at how to make memes , then good luck!.

Andy is Tom's Guide Staff Writer for VPNs and privacy. Based in the UK, he originally cut his teeth at Tom's Guide as a Trainee Writer (go and click on his articles!) before moving to cover all things Tech and streaming at T3. He's now back at Tom's Guide to keep you safe online, and bring you the latest news in VPN and cybersecurity. 

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Wassily Kandinsky

Russian Painter

Summary of Wassily Kandinsky

One of the pioneers of abstract modern art, Wassily Kandinsky exploited the evocative interrelation between color and form to create an aesthetic experience that engaged the sight, sound, and emotions of the public. He believed that total abstraction offered the possibility for profound, transcendental expression and that copying from nature only interfered with this process. Highly inspired to create art that communicated a universal sense of spirituality, he innovated a pictorial language that only loosely related to the outside world, but expressed volumes about the artist's inner experience. His visual vocabulary developed through three phases, shifting from his early, representational canvases and their divine symbolism to his rapturous and operatic compositions, to his late, geometric and biomorphic flat planes of color. Kandinsky's art and ideas inspired many generations of artists, from his students at the Bauhaus to the Abstract Expressionists after World War II.

Accomplishments

• Painting was, above all, deeply spiritual for Kandinsky. He sought to convey profound spirituality and the depth of human emotion through a universal visual language of abstract forms and colors that transcended cultural and physical boundaries.
• Kandinsky viewed non-objective, abstract art as the ideal visual mode to express the "inner necessity" of the artist and to convey universal human emotions and ideas. He viewed himself as a prophet whose mission was to share this ideal with the world for the betterment of society.
• Kandinsky viewed music as the most transcendent form of non-objective art - musicians could evoke images in listeners' minds merely with sounds. He strove to produce similarly object-free, spiritually rich paintings that alluded to sounds and emotions through a unity of sensation.

The Life of Wassily Kandinsky

Modernist abstraction could not have asked for a more charismatic and visionary theorist than Kandinsky - the highest ideals he pursued through his many travels and friendships.

Important Art by Wassily Kandinsky

Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider)

This breakthrough work is a deceptively simple image - a lone rider racing across a landscape - yet it represented a decisive moment in Kandinsky's developing style. In this painting, he demonstrated a clear stylistic link to the work of the Impressionists, like Claude Monet, particularly evident in the contrasts of light and dark on the sun-dappled hillside. The ambiguity of the form of the figure on horseback rendered in a variety of colors that almost blend together foreshadow his interest in abstraction. The theme of the horse and rider reappeared in many of his later works. For Kandinsky this motif signified his resistance against conventional aesthetic values as well as the possibilities for a purer, more spiritual life through art.

Oil on canvas - Private Collection

Der Blaue Berg (The Blue Mountain)

In this work, the influence of the Fauves on Kandinsky's color palette is apparent as he distorted colors and moved away from the natural world. He presented a bright blue mountain, framed by a red and yellow tree on either side. In the foreground, riders on horseback charge through the scene. At this stage in Kandinsky's career, Saint John's Book of Revelation became a major literary source for his art, and the riders signify the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The horsemen, although an indicator of the mass destruction of the apocalypse, also represent the potential for redemption afterward. Kandinsky's vibrant palette and expressive brushwork provide the viewer with a sense of hope rather than despair. Further, the brilliant colors and dark outlines recall his love of the Russian folk art. These influences would remain part of Kandinsky's style throughout the rest of his career, with bright colors dominating his representational and non-objective canvases. From this figurative and highly symbolic work, Kandinsky progressed further towards pure abstraction. The forms are already schematized from their observable appearance in the surrounding world in this canvas, and his abstraction only progressed as Kandinsky refined his theories about art.

Oil on canvas - The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Composition IV

Hidden within the bright swaths of color and the clear black lines of Composition IV , Kandinsky portrayed several Cossacks with lances, as well as boats, reclining figures, and a castle on a hilltop. As with many paintings from this period, he represented the apocalyptic battle that would lead to eternal peace. The notion of battle is conveyed by the Cossacks, while the calm of the flowing forms and reclining figures on the right alludes to the peace and redemption to follow. In order to facilitate his development of a non-objective style of painting, as described in his text Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), Kandinsky reduced objects to pictographic symbols. Through his elimination of most references to the outside world, Kandinsky expressed his vision in a more universal manner, distilling the spiritual essence of the subject through these forms into a visual vocabulary. Many of these symbolic figures were repeated and refined in later works, becoming further and further abstracted as Kandinsky developed his mature, purely abstract style.

Oil on canvas - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfallen, Düsseldorf

Composition VII

Commonly cited as the pinnacle of Kandinsky's pre-World War I achievement, Composition VII shows the artist's rejection of pictorial representation through a swirling hurricane of colors and shapes. The operatic and tumultuous roiling of forms around the canvas exemplifies Kandinsky's belief that painting could evoke sounds the way music called to mind certain colors and forms. Even the title, Composition VII , aligned with his interest in the intertwining of the musical with the visual and emphasized Kandinsky's non-representational focus in this work. As the different colors and symbols spiral around each other, Kandinsky eliminated traditional references to depth and laid bare the different abstracted glyphs in order to communicate deeper themes and emotions common to all cultures and viewers. Preoccupied by the theme of apocalypse and redemption throughout the 1910s, Kandinsky formally tied the whirling composition of the painting to the theme of the cyclical processes of destruction and salvation. Despite the seemingly non-objective nature of the work, Kandinsky maintained several symbolic references in this painting. Among the various forms that built Kandinsky's visual vocabulary, he painted glyphs of boats with oars, mountains, and figures. However, he did not intend for viewers to read these symbols literally and instead imbued his paintings with multiple references to the Last Judgment, the Deluge, and the Garden of Eden, seemingly all at once.

Oil on canvas - Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Moscow I (Red Square)

At first the move to Moscow in 1914 initiated a period of depression and Kandinsky hardly even painted at all his first year back. When he picked up his paintbrush again in 1916, he expressed his desire to paint a portrait of Moscow in a letter to his former companion, Munter. Although he continued to refine his abstraction, he represented the city's monuments in this painting and captured the spirit of the city. Kandinsky painted the landmarks in a circular fashion as if he had stood in the center of Red Square, turned in a circle, and caught them all swirling about him. Although he refers to the outside world in this painting, he maintained his commitment to the synesthesia of color, sound, and spiritual expression in art. Kandinsky wrote that he particularly loved sunset in Moscow because it was "the final chord of a symphony which develop[ed] in every tone a high life that force[d] all of Moscow to resound like the fortissimo of a huge orchestra."

Oil on canvas - The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Composition VIII

The rational, geometric order of Composition VIII is a polar opposite of the operatic composition of Composition VII (1913). Painted while he taught at the Bauhaus, this work illustrates how Kandinsky synthesized elements from Suprematism, Constructivism, and the school's own ethos. By combining aspects of all three movements, he arrived at the flat planes of color and the clear, linear quality seen in this work. Form, as opposed to color, structured the painting in a dynamic balance that pulses throughout the canvas. This work is an expression of Kandinsky's clarified ideas about modern, non-objective art, particularly the significance of shapes like triangles, circles, and the checkerboard. Kandinsky relied upon a hard-edged style to communicate the deeper content of his work for the rest of his career.

Several Circles

Kandinsky painted this work in his sixtieth year and it demonstrates his lifelong search for the ideal form of spiritual expression in art. Created as part of his experimentation with a linear style of painting, this work shows his interest in the form of the circle. "The circle," claimed Kandinsky, "is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension." He relied upon the varied possibilities of interpretation for the circle to create a sense of spiritual and emotional harmony in this work. The diverse dimensions and bright hues of each circle bubble up through the canvas and are balanced through Kandinsky's careful juxtapositions of proportion and color. The dynamic movement of the round forms evokes their universality - from the stars in the cosmos to drops of dew; the circle a shape integral to life.

Composition X

Influenced by the flowing biomorphic forms of Surrealism, Kandinsky later incorporated organic shapes back into his pictorial vocabulary. Executed in France, this monumental painting relies upon a black background to heighten the visual impact of the brightly colored undulating forms in the foreground. The presence of the black expanse is significant, as Kandinsky only used the color sparingly; it is evocative of the cosmos as well as the darkness at the end of life. The undulating planes of color call to mind microscopic organisms, but also express the inner emotional and spiritual feelings Kandinsky experienced near the end of his life. The uplifting organization of forms in contrast with the harsh edges and black background illustrates the harmony and tension present throughout the universe, as well as the rise and fall of the cycle of life. Last in his lifelong series of Compositions , this work is the culmination of Kandinsky's investigation into the purity of form and expression through nonrepresentational painting.

Oil on canvas - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf

Biography of Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily (Vasily) Wassilyevich Kandinsky was born in 1866 in Moscow to well educated, upper-class parents of mixed ethnic origins. His father was born close to Mongolia, while his mother was a Muscovite, and his grandmother was from the German-speaking Baltic. The bulk of Kandinsky's childhood was spent in Odesa, a thriving, cosmopolitan city populated by Western Europeans, Mediterraneans, and a variety of other ethnic groups. At an early age, Kandinsky exhibited an extraordinary sensitivity toward the stimuli of sounds, words, and colors. His father encouraged his unique and precocious gift for the arts and enrolled him in private drawing classes, as well as piano and cello lessons. Despite early exposure to the arts, Kandinsky did not turn to painting until he reached the age of 30. Instead, he entered the University of Moscow in 1886 to study law, ethnography, and economics. In spite of the legal focus of his academic pursuits, Kandinsky's interest in color symbolism and its effect on the human psyche grew throughout his time in Moscow. In particular, an ethnographic research trip in 1889 to the region of Vologda, in northwest Russia, sparked an interest in folk art that Kandinsky carried with him throughout his career. After completing his degree in 1892, he started his career in law education by lecturing at the university.

Early Training

Despite his success as an educator, Kandinsky abandoned his career teaching law to attend art school in Munich in 1896. For his first two years in Munich he studied at the art school of Anton Azbe, and in 1900 he studied under Franz von Stuck at the Academy of Fine Arts. At Azbe's school he met co-conspirators such as Alexei Jawlensky, who introduced Kandinsky to the artistic avant-garde in Munich. In 1901, along with three other young artists, Kandinsky co-founded "Phalanx" - an artist's association opposed to the conservative views of the traditional art institutions. Phalanx expanded to include an art school, in which Kandinsky taught, and an exhibitions group. In one of his classes at the Phalanx School, he met and began a relationship with his student, Gabriele Munter, who became his companion for the next 15 years. As he traveled throughout Europe and northern Africa with Munter from 1903 until 1909, Kandinsky familiarized himself with the growing Expressionist movement and developed his own style based on the diverse artistic sources he witnessed on his travels.

Kandinsky painted his breakthrough work, Der Blaue Reiter (1903) during this transitional period. This early work revealed his interest in disjointed figure-ground relationships and the use of color to express emotions rather than appearances - two aspects that would dominate his mature style. In 1909, he was one of the founding members of Neue Kunstlervereinigung Munchen (NKVM, or New Artists Association of Munich), a group that sought to accommodate the avant-garde artists whose practices were too radical for the traditional organizations and academies of the time. His paintings became more and more abstracted from the surrounding world as he gradually refined his style. He began titling works Improvisation , Composition , or Impression to further stress their distance from the objective world and continued to use similar titles throughout the rest of his career.

Mature Period

In 1911, in response to the rejection of one of Kandinsky's paintings from the annual NKVM exhibition, he and Franz Marc organized a rival exhibition and co-founded "Der Blaue Reiter" ( The Blue Rider ) - a loose association of nine Expressionist artists that included August Macke, Munter, and Jawlensky. Though their aims and approaches varied from artist to artist, in general the group believed in the promotion of modern art and the possibility for spiritual experience through the symbolic associations of sound and color - two issues very near and dear to Kandinsky's heart. Despite the similarities between the group's moniker and the title of Kandinsky's 1903 painting, the artists actually arrived at the name "Der Blaue Reiter" as a result of the combination of Marc's love of horses and Kandinsky's interest in the symbolism of the rider, coupled with both artists' penchant for the color blue. During their short tenure, the group published an anthology (The Blue Rider Almanac) and held three exhibitions. Additionally, Kandinsky published Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), his first theoretical treatise on abstraction that articulated his theory that the artist was a spiritual being that communicated through and was affected by line, color, and composition. He produced both abstract and figurative works at this time, but expanded his interest in non-objective painting. Composition VII (1913) was an early example of his synthesis of spiritual, emotional, and non-referential form through complex patterns and brilliant colors. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 led to the dissolution of Der Blaue Reiter, but, despite their short tenure, the group initiated and deeply inspired the highly influential German Expressionist style.

After Germany declared war on Russia, Kandinsky was forced to leave the country. He traveled to Switzerland and Sweden with Munter for almost two years, but returned to Moscow in early 1916, which effectively ended their relationship. In Moscow he courted and married Nina Andreevskaia, the young daughter of a Czarist colonel. While there, he not only became familiar with the art of Constructivists and Suprematists like Vladimir Tatlin and Kazimir Malevich , but also lived in the same building as Aleksander Rodchenko , and met other avant-garde luminaries like Naum Gabo , Lyubov Popova , and Varvara Stepanova . With the October Revolution in 1917, Kandinsky's plans to build a private school and studio were upset by the Communist redistribution of private wealth and instead, he worked with the new government to develop arts organizations and schools. Despite his participation in the development of the officially sanctioned new institutions, he felt increasingly removed from the avant-garde. His search for spirituality in art did not meld with the utilitarian aesthetic advocated by the young government and the artists it embraced.

In 1921, when architect Walter Gropius invited Kandinsky to Germany to teach at the Weimar Bauhaus, he accepted and moved to Berlin with his wife, gaining German citizenship in 1928. As a member of the innovative school, Kandinsky's artistic philosophy turned toward the significance of geometric elements - specifically circles, half-circles, straight lines, angles, squares, checkerboards, and triangles. In 1926, he published his second major theoretical work, Point and Line to Plane that outlined his ideas about a "science of painting." In both his work and theory he shifted from the romantic, intuitive expression of his pre-war canvases to an emphasis on constructively organized compositions.

Late Period and Death

When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus school in 1933, Kandinsky was forced to leave his adopted home in Germany and moved to France, where he remained for the rest of his life. He and his wife Nina settled in a small apartment in a suburb of Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, and were granted French citizenship in 1939. While in France, his style again shifted and he experimented with biomorphic forms, which were more organic than the harsh geometric shapes of his Bauhaus paintings. Although he continued to paint until his last year, Kandinsky's output slowed during the war and his art fell out of favor as the referential images of Cubism and Surrealism came to dominate the Parisian avant-garde. Despite his distance from the aesthetic forefront, Kandinsky continued to refine his style and revisited many of his previous themes and styles during this period, synthesizing elements of his entire oeuvre into vast, complex works. His late style combined the expressive palette of his earliest non-objective Compositions from the early 1910s with the more structured elements he investigated while at the Bauhaus as well as the biomorphic forms popularized by the Surrealists, like Joan Miró and Jean Arp .

The Nazis confiscated 57 of his canvases during their purge of "degenerate art" in 1937, but despite the Fascist proscription against his art, American patrons - notably Solomon R. Guggenheim - avidly collected his abstract work. His works became key to shaping the mission of the museum Guggenheim planned on opening dedicated to modern, avant-garde art. With over 150 works in the museum's collection, Kandinsky became known as the "patron saint of the Guggenheim." He died in December of 1944 in relative, but serene, isolation.

The Legacy of Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky's work, both artistic and theoretical, played a large role in the philosophic foundation for later modern movements, in particular Abstract Expressionism and its variants like Color Field Painting. His late, biomorphic work had a large influence on Arshile Gorky's development of a non-objective style, which in turn helped to shape the New York School's aesthetic. Jackson Pollock was interested in Kandinsky's late paintings and was fascinated by his theories about the expressive possibilities of art, in particular, his emphasis on spontaneous activity and the subconscious. Kandinsky's analysis of the sensorial properties of color was immensely influential on the Color Field painters, like Mark Rothko , who emphasized the interrelationships of hues for their emotive potential. Even the 1980s artists working in the Neo-Expressionist resurgence in painting, like Julian Schnabel and Philip Guston , applied his ideas regarding the artist's inner expression on the canvas to their postmodern work. Kandinsky set the stage for much of the expressive modern art produced in the 20 th century.

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Wassily Kandinsky

• Kandinsky By Vivian Endicott Barnett, Christian Derouet, Tracey Bashkoff
• Kandinsky Our Pick By Ulrike Becks-Malorny
• Wassily Kandinsky: 1866-1944 a Revolution in Painting By Hajo Duchting
• Kandinskyin Munich, 1896-1914 (1982) By Peg Weiss
• Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915-1933 (1983) By Clark V. Poling
• Kandinsky in Paris, 1934-1944 (1985) By Christian Derouet
• Watercolors by Kandinsky By Vivian Endicott Barnett
• Concerning The Spiritual In Art By Wassily Kandinsky
• Point and Line to Plane By Wassily Kandinsky
• Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art Our Pick Edited By Kenneth C. Lindsay, Peter Vergo
• The Blaue Reiter Almanac By Klaus Lankheit, Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc
• Kandinsky at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Our Pick Website for the 2009 Kandinsky retrospective, with in-depth information on the artist, his work, and his career
• Kandinsky at the Museum of Modern Art Features images of the museum's extensive holdings of Kandinsky's paintings and prints
• Return of a Giant By Karen Wilkin / The Wall Street Journal / September 21, 2009
• The Angel in the Architecture Our Pick By Roberta Smith / The New York Times / September 17, 2009
• Sound and Vision Our Pick By Gerard McBurney / The Guardian / June 23, 2006
• Mysteries and Mush By Adrian Searle / The Guardian / June 20, 2006
• The Man Who Heard His Paintbox Hiss By Ossian Ward / The Telegraph / June 10, 2006

Similar Art

Mont Sainte-Victoire (c.1905)

Rouen Cathedral: The Facade at Sunset (1894)

Highway and Byways [ Hauptweg und Nebenwege ] (1928)

Related artists.

Related Movements & Topics

Content compiled and written by Eve Griffin

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

Andrey Surnov

Digital Artist

Every morning, thousands of residents of Moscow region come to Moscow from their small towns to work or study. Suburban trains deliver people to train stations. At 6 a.m. in winter it is still dark outside. There are only a few passengers on the trains. At 7 a.m. there will be more, and at 8 a.m. there will be a crowd of people at the stations. But at the time of day, depicted in the artwork, there are almost no people on the train. We can tell this by looking at reflections in windows. There is not a single reflection of people; windows reflect only empty spaces and interior lighting. On the outside, we can see moving rails and remote residential buildings where people are waking up and switching the lights on.

It’s warm inside the train, although the wagon is not new. We see abrasions on the seat upholstery, scratches on the panel.

The artist conveys the steady movement of an electric train. It uses a composition of diagonals of rails and windows and the rhythm of vertical partitions, electricity pylons on the outside, lamps, buildings, and reflections.

Andrey Surnov finds perfect color combinations. He paints the whole picture in soft colors, but if you look carefully, you will see that there is a contrast. It is not just a contrast of darkness and light, but a deep contrast between red and green, orange and blue, lemon and purple. These contrasting colors are the basis of the halftones used by the author. The green color on the panels contains notes of strontian-yellow color, and in the brownish upholstery – chords of red color. The bluish snow contrasts with the orange light of the windows. The lilac sky contrasts with the reflections in the window, which have a hint of lemon color.

Andrey Surnov is a master of speaking details that the viewer does not immediately notice. Look carefully at the glare of light in the lower-left corner of the first window. There is a strip with a thin perforation between the pieces of glass. This detail is amazing. It stands in front of a spectator who spends an hour or two on a train every day. If you sit by the window for a long time, you always notice this strip between the windows. This very accurate detail allows us to understand the loneliness of a passenger who leaves for another city early in the morning to gain knowledge or money.

要使用 Midjourney，首先需要注册一个 Discord 账号。以下是详细的注册步骤：

1. 注册 Discord 账号

(opens new window) ，点击“注册”并填写邮箱、用户名、密码等信息，完成注册并验证邮箱。

2. 加入 Midjourney Discord 服务器

在 Discord 左侧栏点击“探索公开服务器”。 搜索“midjourney”并进入。点击验证完成后加入服务器。登录 Discord 后，点击左侧的 “+” 按钮，选择 “加入服务器”。在输入框中输入邀请链接 http://discord.gg/midjourney ，然后点击加入。

3. 将 Midjourney 机器人添加到服务器

进入一个频道，找到 Midjourney Bot 并点击。选择“添加到服务器”，然后选择自己的服务器。授权后，Midjourney Bot 将出现在服务器成员列表中。

4. 开始使用 Midjourney

在服务器聊天窗口输入“/imagine”后跟提示词，Midjourney 会根据提示词生成 4 张图，选择喜欢的图片并点击“Upscale”生成更高清的版本。

5.Midjourney 订阅付费

(opens new window) 。

6.Midjourney 提示词技巧

在提示词中加入风格、主题、构图等描述，以获得更符合预期的结果。使用参数控制图片的生成方式，如放大倍数、样式等。在提示词中引用其他图片生成相似风格的图片，提升创作效果。

按照以上步骤注册 Discord 账号并加入 Midjourney 服务器，便可以开始使用这款强大的 AI 绘图工具了。通过不断实践和学习提示词技巧，您一定能够创作出精美的图片作品。

(opens new window) 50 G 的素材容量空间。