Midjourney AI

I’ve been at the AI Whispering for a fortnight now and it isn’t what I expected it to be. The first few days I spent experimenting with prompts and artists names, and lighting and styles. There is much to be learnt from this, but this way doesn’t really involve the user. It is just the same as asking an artist to create a work of art based on your description. I prefer to be involved a bit more. 

I spent the greater part of this last week learning how the AI blends different aspects of different images, and though it’s not always predictable, you can get a feel for the likely outcome for a blend of two or three images. 

I like looking at beautiful women, so I’ve made a lot of images of them. In the first instance, the image will be nice, but ordinary, like the image below for instance: 

I then blended it with an image of clouds to get this: 

While I really like the above image, it’s lacking in detail and the colors are flat and empty. I wanted something full of life so I used a prompt to generate the next image, so I could blend them:

I know this seems over the top, and at first I would have thought so too but the results are lovely:

I also tried blending it with some Dali type art I found online and got this:

and some surrealist art for this:

I am enjoying the blending, mostly because it gives me something more to do than type words. I have been working on images for the Tarot deck too, though a particular style isn’t yet settled. Here are a couple of preliminary ideas for the Magician and Death cards:

This last one is based on the Hanging Man but it’s just a start:

I am enjoying the Midjourney AI as much today as at the start. The more time I put in, the better my results are. See you in the next one.

Cheers,

Old Man

Styles, blends and sizes

Today I have mostly been having fun with blending images to see the outcome but I also had to look at image editing software.

I like Photoshop and I would like to use it but at over £20 per month it costs more than it’s worth for me. The next best according to the search results is Affinity Photo 2. I haven’t used it but it costs £70 all in. No recurring monthly payments, pay once and keep.

That’s a bit more realistic, so I download the 30 day trial. The interface is very similar, the tools look similar and the layers panel looks similar.

It’s Photoshop without the Adobe branding.

It doesn’t take any time to get used to the interface, it’s exactly the same as I’m used to. I play around with it for a while and crop a few images, change the hue and export, there’s no difference. I like it and I think I’ll keep it.

I am still finding the right style with the Tarot Deck and I really should continue with that but I feel like a change so I blend some of the images I’ve already made with others that I have on my drive. I really like the outcome with several of them and I’ll post them here;

The first two are my favourite, the images Midjourney can create is still astonishing to me.

I have opened an Instagram account and it’s here: Old Man (@oldmanversusai) on Instagram

I’ll link it on the site soon and for now it’s just got a few photo’s, some of which I’ve posted here but I will be uploading separate images there in the future.

That’s all for now, see you in the next one.

Cheers,

Old Man

End of the first week

The first week was mostly experimenting with prompts and using the same words in a different order. I tried using different artists as a reference and several different art styles. 

Things do not always go as planned and getting a scene exactly the way I want it, is sometimes beyond me. I expect this to change over time. 

I have spent a lot of time watching videos and reading about other people’s experience of writing prompts. Much of that was pointless because things are changing so very quickly. What worked well in version 4 will not produce anything similar in version 5. 

Midjourney is at V5.1 now and the prompts need to be written in a different way. Another thing is that most people do not want to make images that look the way I want them to look. I spend time looking at the images and reading the prompts that are being created on the server while I am waiting for mine to render. The majority are happy to accept any image that a basic prompt produces. 

Some folk are using Midjourney for book covers. The prompts are simple and look like this: A book cover for many beautiful children’s stories. That is all they write, and they get some lovely images. 

There are requests for images that will clearly be used as an advert, some for shoes, others for credit cards. They are simple prompts and the results are good, but they will never be great. 

There are also some very detailed prompts and some awesome images. Some of these images are created using specific words or terms and I tried them myself to see the results. One of them is divine light this lights the object, or person in a unique way and I used it for the image of a golden cup (chalice) which I may use for the Ace of Cups. 

I also used it for a dragon image, which I made just to amuse myself;

What I have mainly been doing is trying to produce a set of images in the same style, which will go together in a deck of Tarot cards, and I feel that I am doing quite well at this. 

I am using a prompt with the same characteristics to create all the images and then, I blend each of them with an image that has the style I want them all to have. 

My first week of learning to AI Whisper ends with this set of images: 

The Emperor:

Becomes this, when blended;

The Empress

Becomes this:

The Magician;

Becomes:

The Lovers:

Become:

The High Priestess:

Becomes:

As with the learning of all new skills, perseverance is key. As the late, great, sainted mother used to say; nothing worth having comes easy. Or something like that.

That’s all for now, see you in the next one.

Cheers,

Old Man

Midjourney Gothic Punk

Yesterday was a long day of experimenting and I only received a couple of good images for my time. I learned from it though, so it was not a waste. 

Today, rather than trying different artists, I try different art styles. You may find the images produced today, very similar to those I’ve posted before. This is because I’m using the same description in the prompts and using variations for lighting or renderer or just removing the artist name. 

I ask for the image of the Queen, which would be the Empress Card, but in the style of Gothic Punk and I receive these: 

I like the fourth image so I expand on that:

I like the second and vary it again:

Then I try Cyber Punk:

Then I mix Gothic and Cyber Punk and get these:

I like all the styles but as I’ve mentioned before, the same style must run throughout the whole deck, otherwise it will simply be a collection of really nice images, with nothing in common.

I was thinking about how I might accomplish this overnight and I concluded that I should blend each image with an image that has characteristics that I would like included.

I won’t upload the image as it’s for an ongoing project but I will say that it has intricate patterns in it and that’s how I’m getting the details that I get on the next set of images:

I like these a great deal and so I go through the same process with the Emperor card:

I have more images for other cards that I won’t post today because this blog already has a lot and I don’t want to bore you. I will post the final two for today below;

I like this style and Angela does too, so I think I’ll be moving forward with it.

I used the same description for the Magician card but, although it looks good, I want to try some variations. I also had a go with the Ace of Swords and I’ll post those or their variants over the weekend.

That’s a lot of images so I’ll leave it here for now.

See you in the next one.

Cheers,

Old Man