How to get started with Midjourney image generating AI

If you’ve been on pretty much any social media network lately, you’ve probably seen a bunch of artworks passing by, made by the so called Midjourney AI. The artificial intelligence generates new images based on text input and the results are nothing short of impressive. If you’ve been wanting to try it out for yourself but didn’t know where to begin, then you’ve clicked on the right article. Let’s start your Midjourney with this step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Discord

The first thing you’ll need to get started is a Discord account. So head over to discord.com and walk through the process of creating an account or login if you already have one. You can use Discord in the browser or install the software on your computer. Both get the job done, so it’s really all about what you prefer.

Step 2: Join Midjourney beta

If Discord is all set up it’s time to visit midjourney.com and click on the “Join the beta” button. That should take you over to Discord and you should see a white icon on the left with a sailing boat. Selecting that will give you a list of Midjourney channels. Scroll down and look for one of the newcomer rooms called “newbies” with a number attached to it. That’s where you’ll be “creating” your very first images.

Step 3: Telling the bot what you want

Now it’s time to tell the Midjourney AI what image you’d like it to conjure up. To do that you need a prompt line and you get that by first typing “/imagine” in the message field all the way at the bottom.

You’ll get a suggestion for matching commands. Choose the /imagine promt and you should get the command ready in the dialogue box with the cursor right where you need to be typing your wishes.

Say you want an image of a woman in the dystopian future with fire in the sky. Type that in the prompt box and hit enter to get the generating started. You have the option of choosing an aspect ratio by typing a comma after your wishes and adding “–ar 16:9” for example. This will give you an aspect ratio of 16:9 as you might have guessed.

Step 4: enlarging and fine tuning

The Midjourney bot will start generating your image. It makes 4 different versions for you to choose from and finetune. You might have noticed that your request is being handled amidst other people also generating images. When your images are ready they’ll disappear to the bottom of the “chatroom”. The last request to finish ends up at the bottom. So scroll down to find your images. They should be highlighted to make them easier for you to find.

So this is the result of the dystopian future woman request. Clicking on the grid will give you a bigger version and choosing “open original” beneath the enlarged grid will take you to a page to download the file. What you can do now is upscale one or more of the images with the U1 etc buttons. The top left image is U1, the one next to it is U2, the bottom left image is U3 and the bottom right image is (you guessed it) U4. Clicking on one of those buttons will prompt the bot to start enlarging the chosen image, which will end up at the bottom of the chat again when completed. Click on the image to enlarge it and going for “open original” will let you save your upscaled file.

Something else you could do is choose one of the images to make more variations of. Use the V buttons to do that and wait for the bot to create 4 new images. If you weren’t happy with the first version, you might get something more to your liking now. You can keep playing around with the images, but there is something you should know. You’re now generating images in the trial version of Midjourney and unfortunately that won’t last forever. With the trial version you get 25 minutes of GPU time and after that’s gone you’ll need a subscription to keep generating.

Midjourney subscriptions

There are three types of paid Midjourney subscriptions, Basic, Standard, and Corporate. The Basic subscription will cost you 10 USD per month and gives you 200 minutes of fast GPU time. The Standard subscription on the other hand will set you back 30 USD per month and comes with 15 hours of fast GPU time. A big advantage here is that you also get unlimited relax GPU time, which is obviously slower, but hey it’s unlimited. Then there’s the Corporate subscription for 600 USD a year with 120 hours of fast GPU time and again unlimited relax GPU time.

So that’s it, you’re all set to start generating your own photos and artworks. Be warned though, Midjourney has proven to be quite addictive.