Ep. 25: Micro-Decisions in Midjourney: Small Choices, Big Impact

0:00:00Hangovers, Twins, and New Year Laughs

Play from 0:00:00 8:88:88 0:00:00 what's up Midjourney nerds Midjourney fast Hour podcast welcome Drew Brucker Roy Flynn this guy's always in a new place every time I see him what's happening dude what's going on man this is the life of of someone who is I call it environment add like I can't stay in the same place for more than like oh dude me and you me and you share that it's why it's when office never worked for me cuz I'm just like there's no way I'm I'm always on the move but yeah this week we're coming to you from uh from Naples Florida Naples Florida couple days with the wife with the with my wife's family at their at her aunt's house so we're just chilling hopefully they're they're out doing things at the pool and stuff like that and hey we're

Play from 0:00:45 8:88:88 0:00:45 on the ground weather it's nice it's like it's comfortable it's like 70ish love it not hot not cold it's like right in the middle so I'll take yeah that's awesome dude that's great don't need the tropics you know just give me just give me Comfort just give me just give me Comfort what about speaking of comfort how was your New Year's Eve did you get to enjoy that did you guys do anything was it a stay-at home kind of thing like what what' you all do it's kind of a stay-at-home thing we were you know we had we had [name] of course but we also had my my wife's friend came over we were just hanging out drinking a couple bottles of wine I made some I made some uh nice little luxurious uh pasta with some Lobster and some squid and it was like it's rock and

Play from 0:01:31 8:88:88 0:01:31 roll keep keep pretty simple watch TV woke up with a hangover the next day how about you we did a little bit of both little bit of both so all right we went out to a friend's house but the friend lives five minutes down the street they also have twins they have twin boys we have twin girls they had a few people over yeah they had like yeah maybe like 12 to 16 of us some kids some adults went there around 7:30 left at 10:30 30 11 came back put the kids down and then New Year's the kids were in bed with my wife and I'm upstairs by myself and I'm just like this is this is dumb this is dumb like I'm just going to bed so I think actually this was the first New Year's ever that I went to bed

Play from 0:02:18 8:88:88 0:02:18 before 12 like really yeah this was the this was the first New Year I've stayed up in a while which I was like yeah cuz like most of the time last year my wife was pregnant it was like you know she she's can't she's like I just want to go to bed I'm like fine you know me too yeah but it's a we were we were reminiscing on the days of this is when we were back in our our 20s and a little bit nuts when we used to go out in New York they used to call them New Year's Day parties so you'd go you go out maybe like late dinner is like 9 10:00 try to make it to the ball drop then go to bed then wake up at 4:00 a.m. and go to the clubs so you go to the clubs that's some European style stuff you know like 4:00 a.m. until about 1: in the afternoon and you walk out out of there like you are like I am such a scum of the Earth but

Play from 0:03:04 8:88:88 0:03:04 that was fun there's no way there's no way I could do that absolutely not it was great it's some of the craziest craziest parties you ever been to like people that would you'd show up there at four like you were the new crop like there was people that had been there since like you know 8:00 p.m. the last night and they're just like on their last legs and you're coming in somewhat fresh but it's you know it's totally interesting having your first drink at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and then like starting to go but you know that's New York and in your 20s you do stuff like that you know that might be the only time I've never had a new Dr like started drinking 4 a.m.

Play from 0:03:38 8:88:88 0:03:38 that well maybe but but happens quick though yeah yeah yeah if I have it's been 20 years yeah you get to 100 in about a drink or two it's not like you know when maybe you start at 8 9:00 and it's like you know two three glasses of wine deep you're like maybe I feel something 4:00 a.m. it's like bang we're right into it I mean you know you know you're you're a fraternity guy too like oh yeah we did I mean 8 in the morning no big deal like we could do that but 4 a.m. like to wake up yeah yeah yeah so especially for football or basketball or any sort of sporting event that started at noon right like you were you were up at 700 ready to go and then you know and it was an early night and then that might have been one of those where it's like yeah you maybe fell asleep a little bit early like a 9 or 10 then you woke up around like 3: maybe there's still some people straggling and then you kind

Play from 0:04:25 8:88:88 0:04:25 of like re-engage you know I don't know man those were always my favorite the people that were like trying to make it through the whole night to the next day and you just you woke up and saw them and you're just like they're just a complete mess mess like dude go to bed it was a valiant Valiant effort but failed did you ever live in the fraternity house oh yeah did did one year in there that was 40 guys in one house that was a uh that was a hell of a [ __ ] that was a hell of an environment oh my God D and we had a house mom who was about 82 years old oh we didn't have no house moms that was it was it was cuz it was on campus it was required she she had like her own little apartment we you know I think she was like you know taking sleeping pills who

0:04:30Escalators: The Hero of This Story

Play from 0:05:10 8:88:88 0:05:10 Tak that who takes that job God bless Ruth I mean talk about baby talk about babysitting but not babysitting idiot like geez bro but you know she loved us too we'd bring her like we'd bring her stuff and you know we'd bring her food and like give her wine and things like that and you know just try to get her like every once in a while you try to get her like drunk or something you know like it's a this is a good reminder of there are different people in this world and 99% of people would not want to do that job cuz then cuz then we got a house Dad after that after she retired and he was like 40 and this dude loved every second of it he would bring his he didn't have any kids I bet he would bring his trailer smoker in the back and you'd come back from like you know the

Play from 0:05:56 8:88:88 0:05:56 afternoon on Saturday and he'd he'd be have like a whole hog on there be like dude like I wanted it I wanted to do it you guys can have some thanks unbelievable sick but that's the South though that's the difference between going to school in the South and going you know being in New York you don't have anyone with a trailer smoker you know like that just decides one day they want to sit out back drink beer and smoke a hog for 12 hours right like that's just this idea of a good time while listening to like fish love this guy I did I did two tours I did two tours in the house one was sophomore year the other was senior year okay because went back on the uh what do they call it executive leadership team executive counsil I don't even remember

Play from 0:06:44 8:88:88 0:06:44 but you know it was like a bunch of us uh like seniors decided to do it and then like right back in it you know what I mean it was just H dude and by the end of by the end of that year was like I'm done like I don't like I'm so done like I did it like I don't need anything else from school like i' like I've seen and done it all like next phase of Life please let's just go oh my God man we had a satellite house after we moved out so I moved out my S after my lived in the dorms freshman year lived in the house sophomore year then I moved into my own place at the end of the sophomore year and it was we had like the satellite house which was all the parties it was in between cuz it was right by our downtown area where the Bars were and where everyone else lived so everyone would just either you'd get people coming from the bars you know going to the bars and coming back it was

Play from 0:07:29 8:88:88 0:07:29 just everyone we just left our door open people would just be in and out the whole day all day from class too they just stop in i' walk into my apartment there'd be like 10 people on my couch like normal stuff it's like what the hell you know that or drinking or doing something stupid beer pong going on in the middle of the day like Tuesday at like 1:00 in the afternoon playing a World Series of beer pong you know something something like that best out of seven oh my God never shutting up it was like and then you know I look back on that and my rent was $275 a month and I'm like what come on where' that guy need that back that was you know I mean it it was all of $275 a month though we're not talking luxury here we're talking like unbelievable killing roaches with baseball bats and kind of stuff like that yeah yeah also the South

0:08:00Decision Trees: Your Creative Playbook

Play from 0:08:16 8:88:88 0:08:16 you know a little bit little bit tast good times if you guys ever want to know what kind of conditions you know young men lived in you know in the fraternity days just come talk to us it's borderline it's borderline being homeless with with maybe the exception that you got a you got a roof over your head and you might have a door but you know what even some of our rooms didn't have doors on them we didn't have a door knob for a while so we just had a little stub that you had to turn little stub you got to do what you got to do we had someone throw I will keep this for I will keep this for purposes of the podcast not getting flagged on YouTube please yeah we're already revealing too much here a a phallic object that was was thrown through our window one time

Play from 0:09:02 8:88:88 0:09:02 so it was actually thrown through our front window it broke the glass and then we covered it up with a beer box for about 6 months cuz we didn't get the window fixed but that object became our doorknob for a long time cuz we we realized less people would come in if they you become you become very resourceful you know in those years you know you you really do and so yeah anyway we're dumb you know what this is the perfect transition did you did you know this the perfect transition because we're getting into decisions oh and there were a lot of bad decisions made during that time correct some good ones but more more bad ones now we're leaning into decisions 20 years later here Rory as it relates to robot art and what the hell we're trying to do inside a tool

Play from 0:09:48 8:88:88 0:09:48 like Midjourney correct and you brought this idea up today and it's something that I think like we we always go back to because it's fascinating to think about all the different ways that you can impact and navigate through a tool like Midjourney and get different or similar outcomes whatever you're you're trying to go for but there really are so many different of these micro decisions that go in along the way of whatever you're trying to create whether that's you know something that you're trying to create for yourself or it's something you're trying to create for a client so today right we're going to go into that we're going to start you know kind of going into how you make decisions how we make decisions based on the circumstance based on the scenario and hopefully we uncover a few different things that you haven't thought about

Play from 0:10:33 8:88:88 0:10:33 before or get you thinking about again yeah totally I think it's a good point because we we look at this stuff right like I think you and I create a lot for personal usage but there's also the you know the commercial usage of where people are trying to create for and you have to be more precise right so like what I think might look awesome a client might think needs refining um and you know then you have to go and be like oh this is One Singular image or one concept or one look and I need to go and then you know play with that verse like oh me freelancing and saying like I like this piece of the image and I like this and let me go in this direction where there's nothing other than my own pure creation that will drive it not there has to be an end result so I think there's I think a lot of people give up on stuff in the tool because it's just like as can't do it um you most the time it can but you know there's there's

Play from 0:11:20 8:88:88 0:11:20 obviously certain situations where it's not going to work and you have to go to other tools for that but you know they have they have given us so many different little little features within Midjourney that you can utilize to get to the the end result you're looking for so you know we call it I call it decision tree it's like if not this then this if not this then this it's kind of like like Su by the way yeah yeah don't don't put one of those in front of me you know like yeah actually you know what they're almost impossible to map out like you can get lost in that like they're not so hard to follow but when you're building them holy [ __ ] you know like I don't have the I don't have the mind for that the capacity for that is just you need a totally different brain than the one that's in my head cuz it goes back to a

Play from 0:12:05 8:88:88 0:12:05 few episodes ago while I was doing like this hackathon with this uh you know this other company they were trying to do clation like something simple right where it's like oh we want it to look very rough like not polished clation and you know first we started like going down the prompt Road text prompt like trying to get it there and it wasn't happening and then it was like you know sparked in the head it's like oh if we just drop the if we drop the style iiz and we drop the quality weight like we won't have to go through all this like hoops and you know hoops and Bounds trying to get to this you know sort of perfect text prompt it'll just do it for us with the parameters so like sometimes it's just simple decisions like that that save you time and a lot of like frustration um cuz those like you know even the dropping the quality weight I don't even think a lot of people know you could do that you know just that

0:12:30Small Adjustments, Massive Impact

Play from 0:12:50 8:88:88 0:12:50 used to be from a v V4 V5 yeah disappeared for a while like I mean I think it was I think it was still accessible it's just like kind of fell off the face of the planet because you're just like well people even using that anymore and it kind of just kind of felt like the quality was good enough anyway you didn't really need to explore but yeah so like that's an example that or like sometimes you want something that's way more minimalistic super clean and you know working for example on a piece of Japanese calligraphy with someone and we were just realized that that nii works better for that you know vers vers regular property so sometimes it's like these little sort of things that you get into and I think forced forced problem solving in that sense like client work and stuff like that helps a lot cuz you get to these points

Play from 0:13:36 8:88:88 0:13:36 without having to necessarily like conceptualize it because you're just like you wouldn't do it on your normal workflow but you might have to do it for someone else if that's Mak sense y 100% so a little bit of context there everyone for what the hell a decision tree is why we're talking about it yeah let's find a good example of just a prompt that maybe we want to like let's think of something that we want to create and let's just start with those initial four results we get back because that this is really where outside of the prompt in the parameters which you know again are sort of like these pred decisions that you make and all of those variables that come into play you know the text that you include in the prompt the stylized weight or the value you know the aspect

Play from 0:14:22 8:88:88 0:14:22 ratio uh chaos right like personalized non-personalized now at this point too right like that all play model it all plays a little factor into it yeah and and I think maybe like there's it's important to realize that there are a lot of different ways to to prompt it's not just text and it's not just maybe even blending or you know using a style reference right like there are literally 20 to 30 maybe more ways to do that now when you think about all the different stacking and options that exist yeah I think you know it's probably good to even start with just like we're your first decision like when you just let's just say you're creating for Pure Pleasure you're starting like what are you what are you starting with like how are you going long on your first prompt

Play from 0:15:10 8:88:88 0:15:10 are you going super short are you exploring things like how are you starting that process yeah yeah let's let's break this down the way that I think about it it's all about the specific nature of what I'm going for do I have creative Liberty within that how how big is that Gap if it's something you know for myself I'm much more loose with those things I'm thinking about about you know a general idea um I would say most of the time I don't start from scratch you know I would say that I try to Source either something that I've created or going back to the idea of like exploring Midjourney you know Community right like going through explore Pages or smart search or Global search to see if there's something there a building block that can get me from zero to one and so you know what I'll do

Play from 0:15:56 8:88:88 0:15:56 is I'll probably go through my archive my history smart search you know search for a particular keyword see what's there right and assess it that way if I don't have anything if it's not something I've ever created before that's where I typically will rely on some sort of thirdparty curation and then get from zero to one that way so you know kind of going back to some of the things that we've talked about in the past let's say give me give me some wild idea wild idea I'm not I'm not the best at Wild let's see something I can spell Lamborghini was a little you were pushing escal escal okay like I I've never done escalator before me either so I saw it in the airport I was like you know what I've never prompted for an

Play from 0:16:41 8:88:88 0:16:41 escalator there we go all right and this is this is a perfect example because this is exactly what I would I would go through and do so I've never done an escalator before I would think about okay is this just like a general idea that I have or is this a client request and that's where you know the the first decisions kind of come into play but you know like for escalator in general let's say it's something for me I'm thinking about the type of composition camera angle with the escalator I'm thinking about what type of story I'm trying to tell with the image so for example for me like I like something really symmetrical in this case with the escalator because it is sort of like a leading line anyway I I just like that nature of it so I think like something like this stands out so I might click into this might say okay

0:16:45Iterate Smarter, Not Harder in Midjourney

Play from 0:17:27 8:88:88 0:17:27 like what was text prompted here you know did they put anything with the camera angle no so that tells me that it was a lot more up to chance right and so for me I would I would want to understand what angle this is I'm thinking about things like ground level or wide angle shot or maybe even Ultra wide angle shot to capture this this type of look and then you know factoring the other elements I'm trying to include from there in the image right so maybe I'll start with you know really just trying to Source the sty style of the escalator that I'm going for so this is like more photo realism you know if it's something that's more illustrative maybe I'm looking for something like this right and then I'm looking for okay flat and simple illustration okay I really like that flat and simple illustration

Play from 0:18:13 8:88:88 0:18:13 of an escalator do I like this view did they put that in here like all those thoughts are going through my mind in terms of what I'm going to do next based on that so like this one I really like the lighting here right so like I'm taking inspiration from a couple different places and then deciding how I'm going to act on it so again comes down to am I creating this for myself am I creating this for a client totally see this is what I like about this is seeing how you're doing it because I do it totally opposite like there's so it looks like you have some prep involved like there's a little bit of like knowledge sourcing that you're doing and me like personally I'm going and just like typing it in and then just like seeing what I get and you know cuz I'm a it's more so of like where can I go with what you know where my brain wants to take things once it

Play from 0:18:59 8:88:88 0:18:59 see like it needs to I feel like I'm the borest client for Midjourney like when people are always like I'll you know I'll know it when I see it like if you're a client of great just give give me something I'll know it when I see it right like that's kind of how I yeah and that's how I approach like prompting Midjourney that's probably why my style codes now or my profile codes are like demonic and horrific um just like they're just like [ __ ] you dude it's been too me done too much here but that's that's the that's the main approach if this is under the scenario where it's like not something I'm super familiar with then I might even take it a step further and say like I really like the moodiness of thish and then click into this and then maybe I you know and then I maybe I have other ideas too right um so I'm looking for

Play from 0:19:44 8:88:88 0:19:44 things like okay because I like this what did I like about it let's just say it was like sort of like this red neon lighting well now I have other interpretations of that so that might change my mind on the camera angle that might change my my idea on the color you know like the the mood I'm going for like this is much more cold still got sort of like that neon look to it but it's dope you know like so all those things are going into play I just want to stop you for one second because I think this is also just a great reminder that you don't have to come up with these prompts from like the like the void of your brain like Drew is doing this in a very iterative way which is like you go and you look and you find different pieces and then you put everything together right like it's not just instead of like trying to grow and

Play from 0:20:30 8:88:88 0:20:30 Source all of your ingredients to create a meal like you don't have to go and farm every single idea from your brain you can go and pick up things from different stores and then put it all together you know what I mean so I think it's different ingredients there you go great way to put it all together yeah so like what I might do from here is like let's just say I like this one then I'm getting into like to your point I'm taking ingredients so like I think this has sort of like a cinematic look to it so I could say cinematic shot I I might use still for example if I'm going for like more of like the landscape view I I think still works better for like your typical cinematic still shot but I'm going to put cinematic shot because I know cinematic has sort of like color grading involved and it it has sort of a moody feel to it so I'll go cinematic shot let's do wide angle wide angle

0:21:00How Style Weight Changes Everything

Play from 0:21:19 8:88:88 0:21:19 perspective or actually let's do this I don't even need I'll just do cinematic wide angle shot of escalators then this is where I'll think about like things like what is going on in the scene then I'll put from there I'll go into like something like the lighting uh I'll go into the colors I'll go into Shadows if it makes sense or any other details that I want to have for the shot then I get into my parameters right so like for this I could save myself a lot of time if I like these this color and aesthetic just by go ahead and applying the style right so also here's a here's a good place to to to like stop for like perspective right right now if you were just to like let's go hit prompt and we're going to add our aspect ratio to

Play from 0:22:04 8:88:88 0:22:04 me this is the first decision what are you trying to get out of the shot like are is the escalators the focus do you want to show like the size and scale of them do you want to show them like vertically going up because then you your aspect ratio might be more like four five or something that's in a portrait style great Point yeah if you want to show like a wider cooler like not cooler just like a more dist like diverse environment right with the escalators and everything else surrounding it or the escalators surrounding it you might want to go with something like 21 or 169 right so this cuz we talked about it a while back on the aspect ratio episode where it's like this decision could like change your whole route right like the way it's going to look so I think you know this is where you you start to Branch this is where it goes into like the Multiverse at this point absolutely right this is I

Play from 0:22:52 8:88:88 0:22:52 mean like we've already talked about how many different ways you could go just based on the prompt putting this together we haven't even gotten to the parameters yet yet and then you know once we hit submit what takes place after that so like you brought up a great point with the aspect ratio the other thing I'm thinking about too is is this image about the escalators what's the subject right are the escalators a part of the image or are they the the focus of the the image so like wide angle shadow of escalators where there is a dark hooded man let's just use that for now and then like so cinematic wide angle shadow of escalators where there's a dark hooded man um what else is going in in the scene like do like to me that's not that interesting so I might think about okay like what is he doing like like smoking

Play from 0:23:39 8:88:88 0:23:39 a cigarette there is a faint and Moody warm from the cigarette so like this this I'm right like when you write I'm the type of writer where I will just kind of like vomit it out and then I'll go back and tweak it so cinematic wi angle shot of escalators where there's a dark hooded man smoking a cigarette there's a faint and Moody warm spark from the cigarette as smoke starts to Billow up yeah and then you know like are there do I want to say anything else about the scene because Oh no you're using the style sorry I going to say right because

Play from 0:24:24 8:88:88 0:24:24 I could just go ahead and grab style if I if I want to focus on the lighting the aesthetic that I have here and then this is even great because I could focus on how much of I you know that I want to come through and how much I want to leave up to interpretation of Midjourney so this is where like something like permutations are great because again we're exploring different decisions you can make and I want to kind of uncover those proactively while I'm prompting because I'm going to miss 90% of them anyway let me see if I can you know uncover more just the 1% and get closer to the five or 10% of what is uncoverable so like here I might go let's play with like a a low style weight of 25 let's Jack one up to to 175

Play from 0:25:11 8:88:88 0:25:11 and then let's do one for 150 we mentioned this all the time I'm just going to mention it anyway but at some point right with style references and style weight you're going to start to take the image into account right the image is going to start to bleed over not just the colors and the Aesthetics so what I would worry about with something like Style Style weight and running it too high is it's probably not going to get this part because that's not in this scene so I that's why I'm playing with low values I'm also going to play with high values let's just say I like this aspect ratio this is in a 4 five of course I love 4 five this is where another decision comes into play with how much you know stylized do I want to use so for me let's run one at

0:25:30Remix, Refine, and Reroll Like a Pro

Play from 0:25:56 8:88:88 0:25:56 250 let's run one at uh 500 before you before you hit I was going to say make sure personalization off on this one for the purposes probably of uh just showing the outcomes because I think it has if anyone's not familiar with personaliz if you don't run it you know it does have a major effect on your output depending on what you doing so so so let's do this then I'm going to run this whole sequence and then I'm going to run this whole sequence with personalized also all right good idea okay and then then um this is going to give us plenty of [ __ ] this is going to give us plenty of images so perfect example I got to reattach my style here perfect submit okay and then let's go to the creations and this is again where you're going to have a lot more decisions to make but

Play from 0:26:43 8:88:88 0:26:43 with me running all those different iterations I've got 1 two 3 4 five 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 12 * 4 48 images I'm getting back already and that was just by running permutations with style weight stylize and personalize on and off right so you talk about and you and I aren't sitting over anybody's shoulder but I think this is the part of experimentation where people just aren't going deep enough right so then you're almost settling for an image that you kind of like versus an image that's great right so I use this as an opportunity to kind of look at what's there did it get my prompt right things like that so like let's start at the bottom we've got uh personalize off 250

Play from 0:27:32 8:88:88 0:27:32 and we're just going to go from here right so styliz 20 or style we 25 so it's pulling in you know just subtle bits of that of that image looks like it's doing pretty well though on that cuz we didn't necessarily in this prompt if you're looking at this prompt wondering why it looks so much like the style reference image without like without having much style weight attached to it it's cuz we didn't really prompt for much of the like the aesthetic of the image right so it's it's kind of just taking that that that's that's why it's attaching so much of that image to this because there wasn't we didn't really look at colors right didn't really look at composition on this much that's why you're getting that great point and you know what I did make I noticed something else right and that is I have wide angle shot of here but I decided to do a aspect ratio four

Play from 0:28:19 8:88:88 0:28:19 five there you go let's open this up to like a 32 or a 169 because we're going to get we're going to get some different stuff here and actually I'm thinking let's let's do three to so let's run that and get another example in this mix [ __ ] did it again here we go we do this all the time we do this every single time with always I I hate how it doesn't bring that in there just a little just small gripe so with this I'm I got to make sure to take this one change this otherwise it's gonna give me another err and say I don't have a style selected so boom perfect so now let's just kind of go through these so this was styliz 500 again style weight 25 and to your point

Play from 0:29:05 8:88:88 0:29:05 Rory like this took the colors pretty well even at the low point and so I let do I let that do the heavy lifting I didn't try to think about how I'm going to explain this lighting you know and look I I do photography but like I don't want to spend mental energy trying to think about you know every single word I'm going to use every time I want to try and prompt I mean that that is going to take a toll creatively these are uh adding more style weight right so you're starting to see that kind of come in to play a little bit more that took the wide angle right there that last yeah it did that was that was a really solid one and then we're getting into 75 now with 500 damn that's kind of cool yep let's

Play from 0:29:51 8:88:88 0:29:51 keep going this is sty weight 150 and now we've added your profile so now we got profile that's right there you go and you can see the difference in it how much it takes like now it's a little bit hazier and less less maximalism you know from you know Midjourney's standard creative profile right to yours which is a little bit more like I said like refined clean like very aesthetically pleasing yeah and actually you know like I like some of those uh non-personalized ones here in this case normally I don't but like those ones are pretty solid what I'm looking at now Rory is I've got some smoke from the cigarette but what I didn't you know what I didn't point out is where I wanted that figure did I did they are they you know facing the camera or away from the camera this put them away from the camera so you're not and

0:30:15Escalators to Heaven (Or Maybe Hell)

Play from 0:30:37 8:88:88 0:30:37 most these you can't see the cigarette you can't see that warm spark of light right so that's when I would go back and if that really mattered to me I would make sure to really think about that language a little bit further and put some stronger weight on that whether that's moving that more to the front or you know just kind of like reiterating that through different use of words and language the great thing is when you're using this for yourself you're opening yourself up to other options that maybe you didn't Envision and you can end up liking images that it wasn't initially what you were going for right which is the beauty of that you know because it's like oh well this guy isn't smoking a cigarette but I I do like the way that the lighting really kind of goes up with the leading lines and then you also have the horizontal lines and you know blah blah blah blah blah see this is where you might even iterate like again this

Play from 0:31:23 8:88:88 0:31:23 is for personal right like now what that sparked in my head was like you know lead Zeppelin just popped in my head like Stairway to Heaven and it's like oh like escalator to Heaven I might go and Chase that direction right you know what I mean so it's like you can use Midjourney to to be your creative assistant in that sense because it has the one thing that you're using Midjourney for guys I reiterate this all the time there is no other tool I don't care what you say I will die on this hill it has the most creative capacity in terms of like its own mind like other tools are super precise in terms of what you say what you get this one like with the creative control the parameters everything it'll go in a direction you never ever could have foreseen and you has never been you know has never been created before right I don't care what anyone says sorry

Play from 0:32:10 8:88:88 0:32:10 that's a great Point there's things I've gotten here that there's not there's no way in hell exists in in photography or illustration whatever like it's it's it's its own mind so that's why we use it for this stuff and this is where we got the 32 right so this is capturing more of that wide angle shot of what I had my mind right um so the perspective got tighter on a lot of the guys right like the it looked like they were closer in the foreground or the mid-ground vers sort of like in always in the mid-ground if that makes sense yeah like these are turning out pretty awesome right again we started out with no idea other than escalator and this is how we this is how we sort of got here I like that Stairway to Heaven idea like we might want to explore that the other thing is I don't

Play from 0:32:55 8:88:88 0:32:55 know if this is the best example for it but this this is sort of like a rule of thumb for me if I run something and I don't get what I want in any of the original grids of four in terms of like whether it's putting the cigarette you know in the spark or not compositionally the way like if if if there's one major piece that's missing I'm not going to keep rrolling at because that's a waste of time I'm assuming that if it doesn't get any of those four into something that I like or what I was going for then I need to change something that's it that's the tools way of telling me I need to change something within the prompt whether that's a parameter or whether that's the actual text or whether it's using a reference like so don't waste your time there rrolling I like to use rrolling when I found

Play from 0:33:42 8:88:88 0:33:42 something that's really good and I want to go go go go go I want to get more more more and I think the other way to think about seeing more diversity is that's where you get into things like chaos right it's just like depends how much Liberty you have within your creation but yeah this is this is typically my process and then that's where it's like how close am I to what I want if I really like this shot I'm just G to hit subtle because subtle is so tiny that it's like okay maybe he turns his head slightly to the right or maybe there's something that you know pops up that's just that little bit extra however if I like the general idea of what's here and I like 90% of it and I kind of want to

Play from 0:34:28 8:88:88 0:34:28 you you know give Midjourney a little bit more creative control and loosen up then I'm going to hit very strong and I might do that a couple times very strong typically is going to take three or more things and change within the image it's going to keep whether I'm using a style reference or not it's going to keep that color the aesthetic generally speaking what it will typically do is change things like if it's a person it might change their their eyes their nose their smile um if they've got earrings what kind of earrings are in there um potentially their clothes their camera angle right but it's not going to take you so far away from the image it should be conjoined and connected so like let's just kind of compare the difference right this I believe was those are subtle these are the

0:35:00Troubleshooting Prompts for Better Results

Play from 0:35:14 8:88:88 0:35:14 subtle and you can see subject in the same place right escalator in the same place only difference here is you got a little bit of smoke not too czy hoods change and then when you get up to strong you're going to get just that like stronger different stronger variations like that's a good one like that one is a good example of the strong like we didn't get we didn't lose too much of the image but you got that curvature in the lights which now looks like really cool to me like with that with that the way that it's arcing and going up and it's like the visual aesthtic drawing you right to him like that's that's a good that's a good variation you know like that's a that's a good one I like that so this is where it's like really interesting I might VAR strong that a few times right because maybe I kind of like where it's going but I I'm not a huge fan of the four or

Play from 0:36:00 8:88:88 0:36:00 I just want to see how deep this goes I'm just going to go ahead and hit that like two three times let's see what comes up because this is at at some point it becomes less about creation and more about curation how you going to decide on the best image out of 50 that's where we're going with this stuff it's not just hey look it gave me what I'm looking for I'm good there are times for that but if you're really trying to dial something in you're trying to decide how deep am I going to go have I done all the things I can do within the tool and when is it no longer about Midjourney and maybe about something like Photoshop and fine tuning it or what whatever the use case is to finalize the image yeah you can go into seven billion different directions because then it's like do I change the style do I Remix here do I change the

Play from 0:36:45 8:88:88 0:36:45 style weight do I want to add more of it because I think remix can be utilized very well in some of these things where if you like a particular structure of an image and you want to do like a remix subtle you know like oh maybe it's like want to do like like art on the walls or or like graffiti on the walls or something like that like a remix subtle here or like a remix strong might be if you want to change the colors like I want neon green instead of neon blue right like that's where remix can be your best friend um you know is it is it perfect no is it good yes it does you you might have to run a few like yeah black graffiti on the walls like that to me might give you is this on is this subtle or uh or strong so I was going to say I don't use remix a whole lot so what I typically do do is just do it on both right because um you know subtle

Play from 0:37:33 8:88:88 0:37:33 sometimes the Remake it just doesn't capture it so typically I would say air on the side of strong however right it's going to also change your image a little bit more so I like to run both black graffiti on the side walls of the escalators not going to think too hard about this right now but like let's try let's try that let's hit submit let's press up and that gives us the same command and then we're just going to change this to strong let's see what we get on these for the sake of time this this did give us probably what we were looking for right so here's the here's the little trick that I have with with remix when this happens a lot of times I'll just hit strong again and then hit enter like when it like it doesn't show up as much just you know

Play from 0:38:19 8:88:88 0:38:19 I'll hit remix strong with the same with the same uh same prompts change nothing just just run it again like sometimes that that gets what you want you know cuz this this then opens up to to me another decision it's like oh if remix isn't working you get the the graffiti on the walls do I then take it into edit and do I highlight the walls and ask for the you know for the graffiti right like that's this is like leading you to that way if you want to get to some point where do I go maybe it's at it great point and that that goes back to how are you going to use editor right because if you know if you're G to add something it is harder to add in editor so you're you probably need to go about it either in remix right um and you're going to maybe

Play from 0:39:05 8:88:88 0:39:05 paint something out if you're going to use editor and then you could use an image reference which I think was one of the ideas that you gave me yeah where it's like that'll force it into the image um it's not perfect though right so like sometimes it's you almost have to find the right image reference to get it in there to look right meaning like if I put graffiti in here like we could go and take let's go to I like that we're getting like real hands on here yeah cuz this is like again something that we wouldn't probably do as like an image that we're we're trying to create but it's just like showing the the different decisions that you might go through 100% yeah so like let's just copy this now I'm looking at this this is a very straight on view of the graffiti I maybe worried about is that

0:39:45Personalization Codes: Unlocking Hidden Potential

Play from 0:39:52 8:88:88 0:39:52 going to actually kind of work this view because these walls aren't straight on and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to give Midjourney plenty of room to work with here I'm going to keep some of the wall I want them to know that I want that wall and give enough information say that like I like how it transitions from light to dark right same here but I've left a lot of room for this graffiti to be placed so now what we're going to do is we're going to drop this in we're going to use that as an image weight this is what we yeah it's another decision yeah so realize how many you go through when you're trying to get something 100% this is why like we kind of nerd out on it but like so I'm going to submit that but I could also say I wonder how much that

Play from 0:40:38 8:88:88 0:40:38 styliz you know might factor into the result I might Al also like take this out because all the the rest and the reason I'm taking the other stuff out by the way is because it's already in the image I don't even need to worry about it right it's not going to take away pixels that I've already created so here I might just put black graffiti on the side wall also hit submit within that image reference too you can wait it you could wait the image reference right for how strong you want that to come through so like here are some examples just straight up like obviously like that doesn't even necessarily like feel real to me so here's where here's where like if you go back to the Google Search right if you

Play from 0:41:25 8:88:88 0:41:25 go back to the Google search of the image like the the one in the middle middle black and white sort of drippy on the top row to the left left left left third that one yep like that one to me might get that sort of aesthetic if you click if you copy that one and try it cuz that one to me might might give it like less of like a vector art feel and more of like a um you more of like a like a realism or something along those lines good point it's doing right there is it looks like it's taking that Vector sort of aesthetic right and it's like so this is again when you're sourcing images too and you're looking for things that you want to you know paste in there right and then maybe it's just like you know black graffiti on the side wall that might just work and maybe it doesn't and then maybe like let's just

Play from 0:42:11 8:88:88 0:42:11 try to take the image way down right so we're also saying it but we're giving it enough juice and so like going back to that Vector example I might say okay like it came through and it came through in all the examples but like it came through a little too good in the sense that it just like doesn't quite fit so maybe take that image weight down and play with that too right like you can manipulate this in a few ways so let's go back to the top so there it's you're getting a little bit more of like that there it's got some that's like got more of the perspective it's within the range it's got more of the like so again this can become this can be like sort of like the decisions right like that vector image same Theory just sometimes the image isn't right on the on the uh the image reference but you can play with it right CU now this is easier now to edit

Play from 0:42:57 8:88:88 0:42:57 let's just say you wanted to go and like do more like the corners right yeah that too same and look at this so we took the image weight down a little bit and it became more flexible and malleable right to the image which sometimes just giving it that little juice because adding in editor as we've talked about on these podcasts is near impossible you know you're going to just bang your head up against the wall hitting roll reroll reroll trying to get it to jam something in there even if it's got the room versus just putting an image reference in and finding the weight on it and so that's you know like that is a a huge part of this the other part is what do we want to do with the image like what what is the end result do we care about this while adding is a little bit more difficult and you have

Play from 0:43:42 8:88:88 0:43:42 to do that in a different way I might say I want this person wearing something else and then this is where it goes into more of your substitution or deleting stuff which editor is really good at mhm then I could just say whatever I want that person wearing it's gonna pick that up and it's gonna throw it right in here right um or if I don't want a distraction right I could kind of like maybe there are certain pieces of this that I'm not crazy about and typically maybe you want to do this like a piece at a time but whatever I could do that so editor's great at removing and swapping yeah and if you want to make it breathe a little bit more you can scale it down and give it a little bit more you know like just like that like something simple you don't have to go crazy you know maybe you want a little bit more of the person a little bit more of the stairs just like the sides right

Play from 0:44:28 8:88:88 0:44:28 like these are little creative decisions that you can get you know your your fingers deep into if you want to it's just like do you really want to you know go that way or do you just want to take the image as a output right this is probably I would say like a common misconception for what you know you see something that comes out of Midjourney like you've seen on social whatever like there's this there's typically a lot of process like this that's going on behind the scenes like someone that's really good like you look at those accounts on Instagram or you see people on LinkedIn have really good stuff like they are not just text prompting enter there's my image like it's a lot of this um a lot of like these little trials can we get can we go deeper can we add something can we remove something I don't like this thing like it's like true artist stuff where they're like you know eh not

0:44:30Layer by Layer: Building Visuals

Play from 0:45:16 8:88:88 0:45:16 that that arm is in the weird position ah that wisp of hair sucks you know like they're being meticulous to so you know like that's to me this is what I like I like the creative controls you have here because you can you know it's not can't do this on certain platforms you know you can't go this weird this way with it and I like that you know Midjourney's Consolidated a couple of these steps in in with editor too we've talked about that whereas like before you would have to pan or zoom and then do the other and then you know like change the AR like you had to like continuously use that same image and you know it would stretch over several steps versus now you can kind of consolidate those and just maybe one other thing to point out here right

Play from 0:46:01 8:88:88 0:46:01 like because I edited the text prompt right and I focused on the fact that hey the only thing we were changing in that previous image was the the graffiti right I'm now operating on the edit and so when I painted out those other things right like the person that's no longer in the prompt so now it's been it's been taken out right so this is where it gets into that like deleting and substituting sort of component it right if I were to you know if I would have said dark you know dark figure wearing a yellow jacket it would have kept them in there and it would have changed the jacket right yeah cuz then you know this can be and this can even be a working piece right like you could take this into I'm just going down the rabbit hole now you could take

Play from 0:46:46 8:88:88 0:46:46 this into like okay I like where this is started maybe not like where my favorite you know end point is I can take this into to edit and then retexture it using like a style reference code and then like we get a whole new for what it could look like like I like this structure you let me let me play with it now let me go add like these multicolor you know style references to it or something that's more like animated and soft with like you know Pixar style or you know let's do that yeah so like take something that's simple and then we'll we'll go run it in in retexture 100% yeah let's do that let's so while this is Jing let's find like a let's see if we can find like a style that we like all my srf Explorations here you got a bunch of good ones let's see something

Play from 0:47:33 8:88:88 0:47:33 that fits but like let's take this so let's go back here all right this is done so now upscaled it you can go into editor and open in full editor all right so now what we could do is let's take out the style reference here let's make sure I don't have anything that would compete compete against this I'm going to play around with style weights now you can't use permutations in here MH but let me just make sure to I don't want too much chaos style okay let's start with like 200 and let's do a

Play from 0:48:19 8:88:88 0:48:19 500 so again like the original this was the srf code that we used right so you sort of see this neon red coming through mhm okay was a prompt you just use their imagine in that in that srf code because I like that that's a good one uh oh skull all right thought I thought it said just imagine I'm like all right you know bring it back to Discord days yeah but to to okay so to your point like this is another and I don't you you know like I know this exists but like I don't know if I would have thought of that in the moment you know like there are also different ways to do this so that's why this is cool is because it's like I really like the composition of that and I don't want to change anything but now I'm taking advantage of Midjourney structure and to your point

0:49:00Escalator to Awesome: Final Tweaks

Play from 0:49:05 8:88:88 0:49:05 that's the whole purpose of re retexture right it's taking the the actual structure and composition and the placement of things and it's keeping that still it's just painting over it reskinning it I guess if you will so like here you go we've played around with a few different weights here this was like SW 100 that looks like enough right I can run these over and over again this 200 started bring in like more than Neon right he's kind of get crazy oh like like the walls now like you know now I'm like all right now now we go now we went from Stairway to Heaven to Stairway To Hell right dude I mean we're all over the place right so I like it so I think that's that was I'm glad you brought that up because we we really did piece this together in a very strategic way do I use that same process every single time no like no but this is like one of those

Play from 0:49:52 8:88:88 0:49:52 ways you can do it and it's like well we just started with the idea of one thing we built it we found a style reference that we like the color aesthetic for to save us some time you know so we don't have to get all that lighting Shadow composition stuff down then we put all this um we found something that we liked took the structure reskinned it and see this is this is perfect for the midj like this is why Drew and I probably me more so will like if you gave me 12 hours in the day I couldn't stop because now I see these red cloudy walls and I'm like I want to play with that like what's what's play with the texture of the walls like I you know that that's when it goes like nuts like okay now it's I see the clouds I see the idea that Midjourney generated that I didn't generate it generated that idea of the Cloudy walls or like these like sort of

Play from 0:50:37 8:88:88 0:50:37 like ethereal Smokey sort of walls and I'm like I can play with that and then you know go into the textures make it deeper make it softer those could be like bumpy walls you know then you're then you're getting into this whole sort of like take this in a different direction like you can get and are we saying that this escalator image is like something Drew and I would probably put up right now on on our social feeds no but like the idea of thought process of going through this stuff or like those tiger stripe walls like whatever the hell that was you know that was like something like that cool texture I don't I don't even know what to call that um cuz then it's you play with that and then you can get more depth in those walls if you want more depth in them you know you probably highlight them or retexture this and add Q2 you know to it to get more you know defined there you go texture so it's endless it's endless

Play from 0:51:24 8:88:88 0:51:24 this is why this is why we end up in these rabbit holes for 10 hours it's like because it can go so far and you can if you have like a curious mind and a creative sort of like I don't know where this going to end you can't you can't stop like you can't stop um but yeah that's because that's where I'm always I don't know about you like when I'm when I'm doing things like I think cuz you you might have more of like a very focused on like the portrait side of things with like people and like getting what you want out of that I'm I'm so add between like the environment also being like super intricate I always want to play with something in the environment which then leads me to wasting a ton of time I'm just like our character's cool what else can I do like

Play from 0:52:10 8:88:88 0:52:10 you know to make this like a 1980s staircase with you know like a like a devil standing at the top of the stair this almost has like a stranger things kind of vibe starting starting to go into it too yeah cuz then you can you can do this forever the textures of the wall then do you then you take the walls out and make it like you know just like straight up sky and clouds and it's just an escalator in the sky like I don't know you can go I'm already like chomping at the bit like test all this stuff again yeah just to see where it all goes but here I don't need any of this maybe we just put like Satan standing at the top Santana might be good too with his guitar up at the top okay let's do that it's not gonna show up but I mean it's it's it's funny the

Play from 0:52:55 8:88:88 0:52:55 Carlos Santana or just like rock star something like that good Santana standing at the top of the escalator playing an instrument take that let's run that and I'm I'm moving so fast here I'm not able to to kind of to really think about this yeah like rethink it might show up it might not but yeah so so this is where it's again right might show up might not then maybe go and find your image reference throw it in there you know and add that in and then you're probably going to get it and then going back to that point of playing with the image reference weight you know um you know and and just kind of seeing how flexible it is so let's see if like it started to get a little something right

0:53:30Mastering the Evolution of a Concept

Play from 0:53:41 8:88:88 0:53:41 interesting you're getting something and we didn't descri like we just put Carlos Santan we didn't describe what this person looks like we didn't provide an image reference right this is literally one R roll on tops of like eight images again it's one of those things and are we getting what we're looking for if not like we ran it twice that's where we would make the adjustment if we are getting what we want for then maybe we make a a minor adjustment a tweak a paint or um you know something like that where it's just more refinement at that stage highlight I'm just curious now just highlight the walls real quick and then like I just wanted to type like escalator in the clouds or something like that and just see and we'll add like Q2 and see if that comes up with some nice like you know sort of weird way to show that we're you know either

Play from 0:54:28 8:88:88 0:54:28 in the stairway to to heaven or hell here let's do it I think the think the srf code is going to give us a little bit more red but oh I was going to say do we do we want to take that out yeah let's just take just put escalator escalator in the uh you know escalator in the sky or escaler in the clouds probably get rid of mostly everything and I think this is a good thing to point out too I don't know how people really handle the handle these types of situations I my guess is they're not deleting and like they're doing this sort of thing that we're thinking about which is what's already in the image we don't need to leave that in because that's just cluttering up uh potential like hierarchy and strength on what we're actually trying to get so we could just put wideangle shot of escalators in

Play from 0:55:14 8:88:88 0:55:14 the clouds and type uh get some Q yeah get some Q2 in there so we get some the depth from the clouds let's take style weight out don't need that and it won't like that very much um submit let's hit it twice I always like to run things usually twice at least on this I think with taking the clouds out would be interesting we could always um or the srf out interesting didn't really didn't really get it the way we wanted it huh nope so this is where I you know then you could probably play with the text prompt like we could like fluffy Cloud fluffy Cloud textures or something like that CL textur surrounding you know and this is

Play from 0:55:59 8:88:88 0:55:59 where it's like you can reiterate and say the same thing in a different way to enhance and you know probably get what you're looking for so this is this is the step that you and I would probably take before we realize okay we might need to make an adjustment like maybe it's the image reference or maybe it's like a remix kind of thing or what whatever it is right so and the fluffy Cloud texture surrounding the escalator on both sides uh the cloud are have an ethereal yes glow coming through you might just need to click on the add the added image too where where they actually have the sides painted yes thank you so let's go back

Play from 0:56:47 8:88:88 0:56:47 here I do that all the time let's go back here I know that's why it's like dude you gotta like double check this stuff every time so let's add to Q2 and maybe we'll run Q2 but we'll also run it without it cuz you know sometimes the quality can affect the prop but let's see we we really double down on the clouds here clouds Cloud textures clouds again right so let's go ahead and submit that let's take Q2 out just to see what happens I like this this is this is guys I think this is really this should be really helpful because I don't think there's a lot of content out there that really exist where you're just spending time with us going through the thought process yeah

0:57:00Experimentation: The Lifeblood of Creativity

Play from 0:57:32 8:88:88 0:57:32 you know and this is really what it's all about because so these were the original images we got we didn't get what we wanted right this is where we started to add in the clouds and we gave it more instruction yeah right we started to double down on this is where we had it before now we added fluffy Cloud textures we added there's an ethereal glow coming through right so now it's forcing them into the image more consistently and it's coming through on every image right so if we're getting close here maybe it's just about rerunning this a couple more times yeah right um if there's something that you know is again 90% of the way there this is where you can you know edit this and just you know fill in the gaps again or readjust the aspect ratios so it really is a bottomless pit is what we're trying

Play from 0:58:18 8:88:88 0:58:18 to say totally and then like here's here's like a totally different thing for me right like if I if and even let's just say we didn't get the those clouds with that text prompt reiteration what I would probably do this is just my thought process I'd go take the srf code that we apply to this I would go into just regular create I'd probably do the same like fluffy clouds with like fluffy Cloud textures you know with an ethereal glow hit the srf code enter it to create like to create my own reference image and then bring it back into the editor right so you just like oh I don't it's not creating what I want right oh and then so we need to add an image reference right so let's go create our own image reference and then bring it back in love it let's just go ahead and do it so like we got this escalator out

Play from 0:59:05 8:88:88 0:59:05 Clouds Of Heaven yep perfect uh fluffy Cloud textures we don't need this maybe add Clouds Of Heaven back in that might do it that might be good too Clouds Of Heaven I can't remember what I had but Clouds Of Heaven Cloud textures let's move this back here the reason I'm doing that is because let's focus on what we what we're actually going for what's the most important thing that we get fluffy Cloud right then let's get into the details so let's run this let's run this this is where it comes back to style weight so maybe we want to the default is 100 maybe we want to try like a 200 and then we could also try like a you have do you have a style reference in

Play from 0:59:51 8:88:88 0:59:51 there just the code just the code oh there didn't even see it right but like damn Dam okay so here we go now you might like something like this right like that one's cool too which one you want to go with let's let's do that like like pastely kind of like multicolored situation wherever that was tell me when it stop that one this one okay that one's got good good fluffy textures right copy that image Perfect's go back to get lost in here okay click on that edit the uh the one with the walls painted there we go and then you can pop this in as an image reference we're moving at lightning speed here again can't use permutations here so maybe what we'll do is we'll try this a few times we might also want to

Play from 1:00:38 8:88:88 1:00:38 take we already have the escalators in so what I'm thinking Rory is why don't we just go back and use the same prompt that we just used for this this let's go into edit where we were let's throw this in so again we're just like doubling down on it in addition to using the image reference we don't we just for reference we don't have to go this far like you don't have to do all this but this is also helpful if like you're working with a client they want something very specific right like if they want this fluffy Cloud texture like let's just say that's like their main feedback I need this fluffy Cloud texture it needs to be more like this it needs to be more defined clouds whatever taking them out creating your

Play from 1:01:23 8:88:88 1:01:23 own image reference right that can be super helpful here instead of trying to go Source it externally you can create it yourself and if you really want to focus on the cloud texture just like prompt for cloud texture right and then go bring it back in perfect yeah let's do two two image weights here we'll just see what what we got and again sometimes we get confused here with the retexture edit right now we're doing edit we're not retexturing it anymore we're going to the edit we've painted that just to reiterate this first one I think we did with so IM weight one right really getting the fluffy Cloud texture now and then this is like Image Weight 0.5 right so this is where this is where you can really play CU like how much of

Play from 1:02:08 8:88:88 1:02:08 that do you want to come through we could even go two and then let's go like down to like a 0 point 25 like just yeah just enough to like give them a hint of what's there and you could also style reference it too here you know you can just straight up instead of image weight go style reference on it see what happens great Point that's a great Point yeah so like we could change this or could we could even add it like I mean we could stack it do right whatever we wanted to do yeah so so I mean now it's we're really starting to dial it in but yeah so that's where again it's just like it's not a oh I didn't get it it's a let's give up it's like oh you can you can get there you can get you can get what you want you know then there's then there's taking even further look if you

Play from 1:02:54 8:88:88 1:02:54 want to blend different I'm not saying we're going to do this right now but just like maybe you wanted the the clouds to be like more realistic style then you go and get a you know generate a picture of just clouds in the sky that doesn't have to have the style reference the style reference in there the style code in there um or you want it to be totally different right like using your like I'm thinking of like your little like minimalistic lightning bolt with a cloud like maybe I want something like that in there you can get really creative like I said this is for Drew and I like this isn't like our our magnum opus of image creation here we're showing showing the direction of like but here's the thing dude this is what we talk about you you have to to find the problems to find the solutions yeah you know like you have to run to the problems head on to find the solutions

Play from 1:03:41 8:88:88 1:03:41 whether that's in Midjourney or out of Midjourney and so the reason you and I know this is because we've experimented enough or we've run into these and if you don't you're not going to know to do this stuff right you might get frustrated but there's always a way to get to what you want I think is the pin yeah and I like I said there's no end to it now cuz now you can go and and really start to screw with it in terms of the aspect ratio oh maybe we want to scale like we don't like how tight it is on that little circle the little half Arch on top and you just want to you know pull it up a little bit just like give it a little bit of a couple pixels to breathe like there you go you know sometimes it's not you know it's not as crazy as it seems like doing something like this to won't really hopefully won't screw the image up too much like

Play from 1:04:27 8:88:88 1:04:27 things will stay relatively simple you don't have to go and turn into 4x5 here you can do this and just like scale it up a little bit at a time you know that's not great for keeping your Fast Hours but if you're trying to get yeah right you can you can do it um just so happens I have plenty of Fast Hours left right now which is a rarity uh see like that's perfect now we have a little bit more room to breathe like that's not totally you know from a designer standpoint let's say you didn't like how this kind of like yeah thing right here kind of starts to look a little wonky little meh you know submit it run that you know so sometimes it is still about kind of piecing things together but yeah there are times when you can generate something and you get the image you want and with and maybe you just subtle very

Play from 1:05:14 8:88:88 1:05:14 and subtle strong and that's good and there are times when maybe you build it piece by piece we you you've talked about that a lot right it's just like building in layers yeah cuz this is you know we're doing layers also sometimes like even upscaling this just like upscaling the gallery you might even fix those little lights right you know that's yeah exactly sometimes it does that sometimes creative upscale like will fix some of those little imperfections yeah you know and I'll use I'll use creative a little bit more when it's when there's not a human face involved because with the with the face it starts to smooth it over too much but creative upscaler will fix some of those like imperfections too so this is so this is like

Play from 1:06:01 8:88:88 1:06:01 again this was you know I'm liking that we're doing it this way because I think it it makes more sense when you instead of like trying to explain it you just like see dude how this stuff goes cuz it's I think this was I think this was really good I mean look how long that took us to go through one situation right and that's and and we even just ran permutations on what like the I think like Style Style eyes and maybe the aspect ratio but I mean there are so many other things right because I think if you're in Exploration mode and you want to really U Break Out of what Midjourney might give you maybe you ramp chaos from five you run it up to like 25 that's more of the exploratory stage I would say like 25 to to 50 you know and

Play from 1:06:49 8:88:88 1:06:49 then above 50 you're just getting pure nightmare fuel chaos right like to to borrow that from Rory but and you know we started with what the word escalator and then we ended up with you know Carlos Santana at the gates to heaven with fluffy clouds surrounding an escalator with a cloak figure like love it can't prompt for I mean you could try to prompt for that but you know probably not going to end up in the same way but it's you know that's uh that's like the tool at its finest like we you know and it feeds it feeds like your creativity like it if we didn't try try to play with the walls for graffiti or changing it to something else then we wouldn't have gone down the cloud route you know and then it gave us something that kind of looked like clouds or smoke like oh let's go the cloud route see

Play from 1:07:35 8:88:88 1:07:35 what we can do to get there great Point like these are just all different ways to think about getting from point A to point B and you know could probably do we could probably do an episode like this every once in a while just to like really play with stuff I think so like this is this is really good I we've been we've been we've been wanting to do something like this and I think we were even just talking about before the episode do we need to do this on a live you know but I think we actually made that work pretty organically without a lot of you know dead space in there and really just kind of iterating on the Fly again some of these decisions like you actually want to take a second and breathe and think about we were just kind of ripping you know ripping it to try get us done in an hour yeah wasn't going to be you guys sitting here watching us for six hours come up with the uh Carlos Santana in the sky yeah yeah love it dude love it it's good um

Play from 1:08:23 8:88:88 1:08:23 the the the other thing the last thing I'll probably say on this too is again I've said it once I've said it a million times the whole Midjourney experience is an iterative process like just play it just like Chase rabbit holes because of that do you learn the tool like that's it you because you you can't figure out how to get the clouds and edit then you're like I can I use an image reference should I use a style reference blah blah blah you'll get there and then that skill will be utilized at some other point when you actually need it so just just play you're just wearing you're wearing a big ass tool belt and when you first start all you have is a [ __ ] Hammer you know and then you know you're adding the wrench the screwdriver you know like all the other stuff that comes with it as

Play from 1:09:10 8:88:88 1:09:10 you encounter these and like I I I'll use this as an example that whole image ref in editor piece wasn't really even something I was using at all mostly because I didn't really I don't even know if I knew about it before we had like that one po episode and you brought that up and then now I like I'll have situations where it's like I've got that in my back pocket right I can try that as another way to get there and of course this is all relative because if you can't get something and you do have those limitations you can always bounce out and do something like Photoshop but I think it's important to at least try it and figure out what's possible in tool because in the long run it's going to pay off yeah and the you know image reference has slept on it's always been there it has been it is slept on it's

Play from 1:09:56 8:88:88 1:09:56 always been there and I think people get obsessed with style reference but image reference it's construction it was the it was the OG reference dude that you and I used to use that a lot and I think even you were using that before I was in terms of like layers think getting into yeah yeah like I can't remember man but like when we first started with Midjourney I think maybe even getting into [ __ ] I don't even know I don't even know dude dude it's just been so long but like a blur so total blur anyway yeah I mean this was this was awesome dude I'm glad we did this we'll have to figure out another uh situation that we can do because obviously there are a lot of decisions that go into it which is the

Play from 1:10:41 8:88:88 1:10:41 underpinning of this entire episode and to explore those different decisions and you know get you guys thinking about it we do need to kind of like show those things and and take our time with it too it' definitely be a fun live episode right where people are like chiming in from the sidelines and just being like go this direction okay see where we can go with that and we see what we like and I think it's uh you know this is a good good like this is like play to learn sort of thing not not like go use this today on your clients like this is how you learn the tool to maximize all the different features that it has and this is the only tool that you have all those features in you know there's there's not another one out there that you can go this creatively with it and really and you know what maybe that that's the the other episode is we we maybe focus more on like the client side and like how we might bring in the collaboration aspect to it and you know the mood board piece

Play from 1:11:28 8:88:88 1:11:28 of it or you know all those things now that we have got new features and new toys to play with totally no sick so good I will say probably the last like two months I was kind of like I'm not not saying fading Midjourney but not as excited about it like I'm not like let me go in there and just play around mood boards personalization profiles totally got me back in going back and looking at our old prompts from last week and like looking at the old images totally back in and like again like today just totally like here we go I think go back yeah yeah I I had fun with that just kind of like leave something here um leave you guys with something as I as we bounce out like I had fun with like I I

Play from 1:12:13 8:88:88 1:12:13 have like a kaleidoscope one that like I I used a bunch of images and then I basically ran the same prompt through you know this Kaleidoscope several times and I just got like so many good cool things that I would never you know like one never be able to prompt for but like two just kind of like instantly throws that Vibe right into it you know and um it's just so much fun because like again I don't know I I could have done this before but it would have been different right and I and I probably wouldn't have had the idea for it but it's like I could take the same prompt and run it through different mood boards yeah you know if depending on what the mood boards are like maybe there's one that's a little bit more psychedelic or this or that and you're going to get totally different

Play from 1:12:59 8:88:88 1:12:59 things right so it's another it's another fun little rabbit hole so I love this one dude this is awesome like this one dud I love this yeah is that where the style reference code same prompt uh this one this one has a style reference these ones don't this is all just the the mood board I'll send you the link if you want to play with it yeah this is super cool cuz then again like adding the the style reference code to it or a mood board to it it's going to take it in a whole new yeah Direction 100 so this is it Midjourney if you're if you're listening we're back in we're back in hard come on the podcast we're back in now now open up an affiliate program a Creator program show us some love like we got to do something y'all we got to do something the one request I do have if you are listening with the

Play from 1:13:45 8:88:88 1:13:45 new personalization profiles and this is also a tip for anyone who wants to go back and find this actually let me share my screen real quick this will be I shared this on Twitter the other day cuz I personally had totally forgotten about it um if you are unorganized like me I am totally unorganized if you go to Discord and you go back to if you want to find your old personalization codes oh yeah this is exceptional let me just find bot here look if you just type in on Discord you can't do this on the website I don't think if anyone has this on the on the website please let me know list personalized codes that's it list undor personalized codes back slash of course hit enter bang gives you all of

Play from 1:14:32 8:88:88 1:14:32 them which I was like I didn't even know I had this one this one or the this one here there's like three or four that I didn't even know I had I remember the two ww whatever like the BL2 and then I remember maybe the first one I didn't even know I had all these so you know it's it's a good place to go back and find all of them I wish the website would do this or Midjourney if you're listening can I make can I go back back and like can I just change my Global profile to this cuz I you know I love these so hey hey actually one more thing before we go can you tell tell the folks too that idea you had about style tuner oh so if you are like me again you loved your little style tuner um you can go and either one I found all my you know searched all my old style tuner

Play from 1:15:19 8:88:88 1:15:19 images in the in the organized tab found those added those to a mood board and then you have your style tuner codes again like that's it you just have to add them to add the curated images with the aesthetic that you want to the mood board and then you can regenerate them off of that and basically brought style tuner back can't create the same you know you technically could go on Discord go back to you know version 5.2 and create more style codes if you wanted to do that I don't know if you need to or style tun St excuse me tune Styles if you wanted to or you can take your old ones that you really liked and just put them in a boot board so yeah little tip I like that because you know we talked about style tuner it was it was really good at dialing those in also going back

Play from 1:16:04 8:88:88 1:16:04 to your Discord uh point I just tried this you can also put list SL back slash list and it'll bring up style tuner yeah uh codes or whatever those were they codes I think they're tune Styles I believe they're whatever it did come out as a code it's say Das style then code list tuners and then yeah so it then gives you the tuner link right because if you remember it took you to its own link with all the ratings and then it also gives you um what you put in for the text for that as well so just another way to go back and and revisit all that stuff while you're bringing that up that one's for the that one's for the real heads real heads now OG's only that was good man that was good we

Play from 1:16:50 8:88:88 1:16:50 got a even on the last just dumped a lot of like quick stuff in there but this was uh this was needed again it's another epod dude and the best part is like we sometimes we're like what are we going to talk about today there's no real updates we had no plan boom we just come in we just dropped that but no plan going anyway I really hope this one is helpful I think it will be because let's be honest I don't think we get enough perspective on how other people operate within their workflows of trying to come up with an idea from ideation to execution right and then especially all those iterations in between which we covered so hopefully that was valuable we'll come up with another Banger next week hell yes like And subscribe please

Play from 1:17:35 8:88:88 1:17:35 we love you all like And subscribe we'll see you guys in the next one see you goodbye