Edited by Megan van der Wagt and Rob Coenraads

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Perhaps the best application of artificial intelligence at the moment is image-generation, or image generation. You can use an AI to create images, such as photos and paintings, based on a description. For example, you type a photo of Steve Jobs drawing a concept of the Apple Watchthen you get exactly that – even though such a photo was never taken.

There are now several apps and websites to generate images with AI, but Midjourney takes the cake in our opinion. This AI produces by far the sharpest and most detailed images and listens best to the details in the commands you give. You can read how to do that in this workshop. First we provide an overview and information of the midjourney page, then there is the workshop with a step-by-step plan.

Try it out and subscribe
Since mid-2023, Midjourney has had an open beta phase in which everyone can try out the image generator. After 25 test drives, you can only continue with a subscription for approximately 12 euros per month. Using the service is a bit complicated: first you need an account on the instant messaging service and social platform Discord. In Discord you need the Midjourney Bot out on your server. This has already been done in the many newbie channels such as ‘#newbies-53’.

You start a prompt with the command /imagine. Then a appears prompt, which produces four images in the channel’s thread. Besides the command, Midjourney knows a lot modifiers as -aspect for the aspect ratio. The buttons appear below the image U1 until U4 and V1 until Q4. YOU stands for Upscale and produces a high-resolution version; V for Variation creates four new variants of an image proposal. The images appear in the selected channel.

Search and adjust
Because other users also try out their ideas in the newbiechannels, you sometimes have to search a bit to find your prompt. Additionally, all images are public and may be modified by the community. Only the Corporate Plan offers one Private Mode for $600 a year.

Midjourney has its own unique style, with illustrations reminiscent of paintings. These creative and often atmospheric illustrations look good because of their visually interesting texture. At the same time, this is a useful way to cover up a lack of details

1 /imagine
Midjourney works within an endless stream of requested images, including those from others. At the bottom of the window you can request your own image with the /imagine command. When you get up Enter press, the end result of your assignment will appear in the stream of messages. So pay close attention: you can recognize the result of your specific assignment by the yellow line on the left. Tip: scroll up to stop the automatic scrolling of the page.

2 Result
The result of your assigned assignment consists of four different pictures. You can choose per image whether you want to scale it up to large format (U for upscaling) or generate variants based on that image (V for variant). Here 1 is top left, 2 top right, 3 bottom left and 4 bottom right. There is also a refresh icon: this allows you to create four completely new images.

3 Roman
Discord works with virtual ones Roomsof which the so-called newcomer rooms used to generate images. There are also other rooms such as getting started for tips for Midjourney and also all kinds of rooms in which the AI ​​is discussed and the best pictures are shared. So if you want to dive deeper into Midjourney, you’re in the right place in Discord.

4 Account or no account
At the top of the window you can claim your account. This means that you save the username – which you enter when you use Midjourney for the first time – with an email address and password. This way you can also access your account and the assignments you have entered later, which is quite handy. In addition, Discord is a very nice app for video calling and screen sharing.