EP 024 · 86 MIN MOODBOARDS ARE A MINI LORA FOR STYLE
Midjourney Moodboards, Mayhem, and Magic
The short version
Episode 24 is a Rory-and-Drew deep dive on Midjourney's new moodboards feature, which the hosts rate a 10/10 for replacing the discontinued Style Tuner and hours of manual SREF-code tuning. They untangle the overlap between moodboards, personalization profiles, and global profiles live on screen, and Rory likens the feature to running a personal LoRA for style. The episode ends with their favorite Midjourney images of 2024 and a shared wish for the fragmented AI-tool landscape to consolidate in 2025.
Key takeaways
- 01
Moodboards finally replace Midjourney's discontinued Style Tuner: Rory rates the feature a 10/10 for locking in a tight, repeatable style without long text prompts.
- 02
Keep a moodboard's image set tight (near one style) for consistency, or broaden it for a looser 'global' aesthetic — mixing the two confused both hosts on air.
- 03
Treat moodboards like a personal LoRA: Rory predicts Midjourney will extend the same profile-plus-moodboard approach to character consistency once V7 ships.
- 04
For client work, build the aesthetic once as a moodboard code and hand it off, instead of re-explaining an SREF-and-style-weight setup on every call.
- 05
Dropping quality and stylize weights isn't a downgrade: Rory deliberately used low settings to get an imperfect, hand-made claymation look instead of a polished render.
- 06
Both hosts want AI-tool consolidation in 2025: Rory says he's tired of needing Midjourney, Flux, Minimax and Runway each for one specific strength.
- 07
Revisit old prompts in new model versions: rerunning a 2023 image in V6.1 showed a 'pretty big difference' worth mining for fresh content.
Receipts · said on the record
“I've wanted this feature for so long. I did a post a while back about how to create your own SREF codes, which was like, how do you dial in text prompting so hard that you get exactly the style that you want?”
“Now you have a way to actually siphon out a client aesthetic and put it in a certain place without having to go and text prompt specifically for it every single time or use a bunch of SREF codes, play with style weighting.”
“I'm starting to think this is like their LoRA training. … Now we have like a little mini LoRA here for styles. I have a feeling they're going to roll this into characters.”
“This quality over quantity thing and the same being true with images, right? Like we can create thousands, hundreds of thousands of images. … There's also a cool aspect of taking a very select few images and focusing hard and tight on that.”
“I'm hoping for some consolidation because right now it seems like everything is just getting wider and wider and wider. We have to use all these different things.”
“How is that even sustainable at this point? The only people that are really testing these tools, all of them, are people that are like us, where this is like pretty much all we're doing.”
Chapters
- 0:00:00 Holiday Chaos and Rice Ball Dreams
- 0:04:30 Midjourney Mood Boards: What’s New?
- 0:08:00 Why Mood Boards Are Game-Changers
- 0:12:30 Personalizations vs. Moodboards: TF is the Difference?
- 0:18:00 Cracking the Code on Consistency
- 0:22:30 Moodboards for Clients and Teams
- 0:27:00 Chaos Settings: Creative or Crazy?
- 0:33:30 Exploring Unique Styles with Midjourney
- 0:40:00 AI Tools: Too Many Choices?
- 0:46:30 Faces That Tell Unique Stories
- 0:50:00 The Future of Character Generation
- 0:55:00 Video Tools and Visual Storytelling
- 1:00:30 Creative Growth: What We’ve Learned
- 1:05:30 Our Favorite Images from 2024
- 1:10:30 Wrapping Up with New Year Goals
Questions this episode answers
What are Midjourney moodboards and how do they work?
Moodboards let a user upload a set of reference images that Midjourney blends into a reusable style code. Rory says a tight, narrow image set gives repeatable, SREF-like results, while a broader set gives a looser, more general aesthetic.
What's the difference between a Midjourney moodboard and a personalization profile?
Both hosts found this confusing live on air: a personalization profile is built by ranking many images (Midjourney suggests around 200) into a broad personal style, while a moodboard is a smaller, specific image set that can be combined with or without that profile.
What did Fast Hours think of Midjourney's discontinued Style Tuner?
Rory calls Style Tuner his favorite past Midjourney feature and says he invested about 20 hours training one before Midjourney discontinued it. He argues moodboards finally bring back that same level of consistent style control.
Why do Rory and Drew want AI-tool consolidation?
Rory says testing Midjourney, Flux, Minimax, Sora and Runway separately for each tool's one strength isn't sustainable, and both hosts hope a future tool pulls ahead across the board instead of the field getting 'wider and wider.'
Does lowering Midjourney's quality or stylize setting actually help certain looks?
Yes. Rory says deliberately lowering the quality and style weights produced a rougher, hand-made claymation look, and argues that knowing when to scale settings down, not just up, is a sign of understanding the tool.
Show notes
MJ:FH Ep.24—Midjourney Moodboards, Mayhem, and Magic (with Drew Brucker & Rory Flynn)
