Previously, I introduced you to Midjourney and explained the basics to get started. Out of the box, Midjourney is a very powerful creation tool, but in this article I will show you some of the parameters that will help take your Midjourney images from good to great.

The way to access these features is through the use of parameters with the --x syntax, where x is the parameter’s name. For this article our base prompt will be /imagine a tiger in the wild.

Stylize⌗

The first parameter we will discuss is the stylize parameter. The stylize parameter controls how stylized the image is in terms of color and composition. There are two easy ways to change the stylize value. If you want to change the default stylize for all of your prompts, you can use the /settings command and select a new stylize level. By default, the stylize level is set to medium. You can also set the stylize for each individual query using the s parameter. Ex. --s 500 The numerical levels for each stylize setting option are: Stylize Low = --s 50, Stylize Med = --s 100, Stylize High = --s 250, Stylize Very High = --s 750

/imagine a tiger in the wild --s 50

A Tiger in the Wild with Low Stylize

/imagine a tiger in the wild --s 750

A Tiger in the Wild with Very High Stylize

You can see the difference in the style between our first image with stylize set to Low and the second image with stylize set to Very High. Notice the detail in the foliage and in the tiger’s coloring in the second image.

Aspect Ratio⌗

By default, Midjourney outputs the images as squares. Many times, we want our images to be a different size or aspect ratio to fit our need. Maybe you want a wallpaper or you need to a specific size to fit on a webpage. Setting the aspect ratio is as easy as using the ar parameter. Ex. —ar 16:9 for a classic widescreen output. You can put in resolutions like -- ar 1920:1080, but that will be simplified to -- ar 16:9 and Midjourney will output it at whatever resolution is appropriate for the quality you have selected in settings. More on quality later.

/imagine a tiger in the wild --ar 16:9

A Tiger in the Wild with 16 by 9 Aspect Ration

No⌗

The next parameter is the simplest that we’ll discuss today. If there is a specific aspect that you do not want to show up in your image you can ask Midjourney to not include that with the no parameter. Ex. —no green

/imagine a tiger in the wild --no green

A Tiger in the Wild with No Green

Weights aka Multi Prompting⌗

In the last section we discussed the no parameter. Midjourney provides a more fine tuned parameter to accentuate or negate certain words in your prompt by using prompt weights. Weights, also known as multi prompting, are an incredibly powerful tool in Midjourney. You can use weights by adding ::x after the part of your prompt that you want to weigh, where x is a positive or negative whole number. Weights are where you start to unlock the customization of Midjourney. We can use it on our tiger prompt to accentuate different parts of our prompt.

/imagine a tiger in the wild::3 green::-1 by the water::1

A Tiger in the Wild with Weights #1

/imagine a tiger in the wild::3 green::-1 by the water::1 on a mountain::4

A Tiger in the Wild with Weights #2

In the second image, you can see that Midjourney followed our weights and put our tiger “on a mountain” at the expense of our prompt “by the water”. Since the weight for “on a mountain” was much higher, Midjourney gave it higher priority. You can also see that I used green::-1. This is equivalent to --no green.

Quality⌗

Midjourney provides a sliding scale for the output quality. The quality can be modified using the quality parameter. Ex. --quality 1 Like the stylize parameter, quality can also be controlled in with the /settings command. You can change the quality from .25 to 2, but the larger numbers will use more GPU minutes, which will cost you if you go over your monthly limit.

/imagine a tiger in the wild --quality .25

A Tiger in the Wild .25 Quality

/imagine a tiger in the wild --quality 2

A Tiger in the Wild Very High Quality

Because the quality parameter correlates directly to the processing time of the image, sometimes you will see incomplete results like our first image. Our second image set to Very High Quality looks much better than our Low Quality image, but is almost indistinguishable from our standard image. In my experience, very high quality is rarely worth it over the standard quality.

These parameters are extremely powerful ways to customize your Midjourney output. While the parameters are few and relatively simple, their power comes from their combination and dialing in the exact result that you are looking for. I hope this guide helps you, and stay tuned for more on True Gold.