Allar Haltsonen

Episode 50 reunites Rory and Drew with returning guest Allar Haltsonen (Estonia) to unpack Midjourney's brand-new Style Explorer, including a little-known trick that uses Smart Search to surface style codes similar to ones you already like. The trio also goes deep on Nano Banana across Freepik, Krea and a new Photoshop plugin, and Drew live-builds a consistent multi-scene 'world' around one character using a simple keep/change prompt formula.

• Hidden Style Explorer hack: click into any style code, hit Smart Search, then switch its tab to 'Styles' to surface other codes with a similar visual DNA.
• Adding --raw to a style code can drastically change the result, especially on illustrative or 3D-leaning styles; photorealistic styles are affected far less.
• Style Explorer removes the need to 'mine' your own SREFs by burning credits on random pulls, which especially helps new users and lower-tier subscribers.
• Nano Banana output quality varies by platform: Rory and Allar both find Freepik's results better than Krea or Google AI Studio, though Freepik's UX and aspect-ratio handling are clunky.

Episode 34 features Estonian AI artist Allar Haltsonen breaking down the moodboard-and-personalization stack behind his signature "transparent" Midjourney aesthetic, plus his fashion workflow in the try-on tool Caimera. Rory and Drew press him on aspect-ratio strategy and close with predictions for Midjourney V7: stronger prompt coherence and Omni-Reference character consistency, but no dramatic jump in raw image quality.

• Stack two moodboards, one built from style-reference images for a specific look and one from your own best archived work, then mix both through your personal code.
• Generate at 3:4 first to nail the main subject in sharp detail, then expand to 9:16 or 16:9; starting wide from the outset scrambles the composition, Allar says.
• Stacking personalization on top of moodboards fights Midjourney's plasticky "smoosh face" skin, but Allar says results still read synthetic up close on fashion work.
• For fashion product shots with varied body types, Allar uses Caimera: one reference image for style, one product image, then its "try on" tool composites them.