Midjourney V6: All New Features. The Absolute Best AI Image Generator?
- AI Catalyst
- December 22, 2023
- Blog
- 0 Comments
The long-awaited Midjourney Version 6 has finally been released, after being 9 months in development, and it’s not what you think it is. We’ll go through all its new features, compare the images with other AI image generators like DALL-E 3 and the older versions of Midjourney, and find out if the $10 or $30 subscription is now finally worth it.
Midjourney Version 6
First of all, for this update, the developers mentioned that the changes would not be as significant as those from Midjourney v3 to Midjourney v4. However, there are still a lot of great improvements compared to version 5 that are worth exploring. These enhancements focus on user experience, image quality, and better prompt understanding. To use the V6 model you need to type /settings and select the alpha version of Midjourney v6 or type –v 6 at the end of your prompt.
Better Prompt Understanding
Midjourney v6 has greatly improved its understanding of natural language. From the words of the developers, You will need to ‘relearn‘ how to prompt, meaning you no longer need to use specific terms like ‘4k,’ ‘Unreal Engine,’ or camera model names. Now, you can describe the image you want to create just as you would to a human and receive results very close to your description which wasn’t really the case with v5.
To get a nice-looking photorealistic image, use the “–style raw” parameter and simply type ‘photo of’ followed by your subject and description. Lower values of the “stylize” parameter will have better prompt understanding while higher values will have better aesthetics. It still works best with short prompts, so try to avoid unnecessary words in your prompt and differentiate objects with commas.
Photorealism
Midjourney is best known for its unmatched photorealistic images and with this update, the photorealism got even better. The most noticeable difference is that the images are now more coherent and more detailed. Here is an image comparison with Version 5 using the same prompt.
Midjourney v5.2
Midjourney v6.0
Prompt
Midjourney v5.2
Midjourney v6.0
Prompt
Midjourney v5.2
Midjourney v6.0
Prompt
Another interesting update is its enhanced ability to generate multiple characters and images of real people, like actors, politicians, and celebrities. While this feature is undoubtedly fun, it might be removed or heavily censored in the future due to privacy concerns.
Text on Images
Midjourney can now generate short text on images! This feature is not very impressive right now, but the developers promised that it will be significantly improved in the near future.
You must write your text in “quotations” and keep your prompt as short as possible. Using the style raw or lower stylize values may also help.
Better Art Styles
When we compared Midjourney v5 with DALLE 3 you could see that Midjourney was terrible at creating images in pixel art style. Now, v6 can generate high-quality and precise pixel art images. Other image styles have been noticeably improved as well.
Midjourney v5.2
Midjourney v6.0
Prompt
Midjourney v5.2
Midjourney v6.0
Prompt
Many users report that now Midjourney does not react to real artists’ names and sometimes even ignores general art style descriptions, which will be hopefully fixed soon.
Midjourney V6 New Tools and Features
Currently, several version 5 features like Zoom, Inpainting, 4x upscaling, and Style Tuning are not available. These will be reintroduced gradually in the coming months. According to recent Discord polls, where the community voted on which features they’d like to see first post-launch, Inpainting is expected to return first, followed by Style Tuner, Zoom, the 4x upscaler, and Pan.
Two new upscalers are now available: ‘creative‘ and ‘subtle.’ Both upscale images to twice their original resolution. The ‘creative’ upscaler adds new details, whereas the ‘subtle’ upscaler focuses on preserving the original image.
Subtle Upscale
Creative Upscale
Midjourney Website
The team is also focused on improving the new Midjourney website. Right now it serves more as a gallery where you can browse through images created by the community, rate them, and examine the prompts. Soon we will be able to generate images outside of Discord using the website but the full release date of the website is not yet known. If you are a paid Midjourney member you can access the beta version of the website by this link.
Midjourney Version 6 - Final Thoughts
Getting back to our initial question: Is the 30-dollar subscription now worth it? And my answer is not yet. I would suggest giving Midjourney v6 some time to fully improve and regain all the missing tools and features. If you want to try it for fun, the limited 10-dollar subscription should be enough although you will run out of your generation credits faster with the v6 model. DALL E 3 on Bing Image Creator is a great free alternative as it matches Midjourney in everything other than photorealism. In any case, we will keep you updated as the AI image generation technology evolves.
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