3 Essential MidJourney Prompt Tips for Stunning Results

Creating exceptional visuals with MidJourney depends heavily on the way you craft your prompts. A well-written prompt not only guides the AI to generate the image you envision but also ensures a higher degree of accuracy and detail in the final output. Below, we’ll dive into three essential tips to help you write better prompts for MidJourney and bring your creative ideas to life.

1. Keep Descriptions Short and Ordered

When writing prompts for MidJourney, less is often more. A concise and clear description allows the AI to focus on the most important aspects of your vision without unnecessary confusion or overlap. Overloading a prompt with excessive details can lead to chaotic results or muddy the overall aesthetic.

How to Do It:

  • Focus on the key elements: subject, action, and environment.
  • Avoid repetitive or overly verbose descriptions. Instead, be direct.
  • Maintain a logical order. Start with the subject, then add modifiers such as lighting, mood, or style.

Example:

  • Instead of:
    “A beautiful sunset with warm golden light shining over a small cozy cottage surrounded by tall trees and lush green grass, with a tranquil river reflecting the golden colors of the sky in the foreground.”
    Try this:
    “Golden sunset, cozy cottage, tall trees, lush grass, tranquil river reflection, warm light.”

This keeps the description focused and easy for the AI to interpret, resulting in a cleaner and more refined output.

2. Learn Lighting and Lens Descriptions

Lighting and lens effects play a massive role in shaping the mood and realism of your images. By using the right terminology for lighting and camera techniques, you can control the atmosphere, depth, and clarity of your generated image. These aspects can elevate a basic prompt to something that feels professional and cinematic.

Types of Lighting:

  • Natural Lighting: soft sunlight, golden hour, overcast light, moonlight.
  • Studio Lighting: softbox lighting, rim light, dramatic shadows, diffuse light.
  • Creative Lighting: neon glow, volumetric lighting, candlelight, lens flare.

Lens and Camera Descriptions:

  • Wide-angle lens, 85mm portrait lens, shallow depth of field, macro photography, bokeh background.

Example:

  • Adding lighting and lens details:
    “A cinematic portrait of a woman with soft golden hour lighting, shallow depth of field, 85mm lens, warm glow, natural bokeh.”
  • Without lighting or lens details:
    “A portrait of a woman.”

The former example adds depth, mood, and clarity to the vision, making the result feel more intentional and visually appealing.

3. Give It a Style to Use

One of MidJourney’s strengths is its ability to mimic various artistic styles, photography techniques, or even the work of famous artists. By specifying a style in your prompt, you provide the AI with a clear direction for the visual tone, texture, and composition of the image. This ensures your creation aligns with your intended aesthetic.

How to Use Styles:

  • Artistic Styles: hyper-realistic, surreal, impressionist, abstract, anime, minimalist.
  • Photography Styles: cinematic, editorial, vintage, black-and-white, HDR.
  • Influential Artists: van Gogh, Picasso, Hayao Miyazaki, H.R. Giger.

Example:

  • Without style:
    “A cityscape with tall skyscrapers and cars on the street.”
  • With style:
    “A cyberpunk cityscape, glowing neon lights, futuristic skyscrapers, cinematic style.”

In the latter example, the style provides a creative anchor for the AI to build upon, making the output more unique and visually captivating.

Putting It All Together

Let’s combine these tips into a single cohesive example to showcase how they work together:

Prompt Example: “A futuristic skyline at night, glowing neon signs, tall cyberpunk skyscrapers, volumetric lighting, shallow depth of field, cinematic style.”

Here’s why this works:

  1. The description is short and ordered, with no unnecessary fluff.
  2. Lighting (volumetric lighting) and lens (shallow depth of field) effects are specified for mood and clarity.
  3. The style (cyberpunk and cinematic) gives it a unique artistic direction.

Final Thoughts

Writing effective prompts in MidJourney is an art in itself. By keeping your descriptions short and ordered, mastering lighting and lens terminology, and assigning a style to your image, you can drastically improve the quality and creativity of your results. Take the time to experiment with different combinations of these tips, and you’ll soon be generating images that not only meet but exceed your expectations.