Club Benefits
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Daily (Mon-Sun)
Tom's Guide Daily
Sign up to get the latest updates on all of your favorite content! From cutting-edge tech news and the hottest streaming buzz to unbeatable deals on the best products and in-depth reviews, we’ve got you covered.
Weekly on Thursday
Tom's AI Guide
Be AI savvy with your weekly newsletter summing up all the biggest AI news you need to know. Plus, analysis from our AI editor and tips on how to use the latest AI tools!
Weekly on Friday
Tom's iGuide
Unlock the vast world of Apple news straight to your inbox. With coverage on everything from exciting product launches to essential software updates, this is your go-to source for the latest updates on all the best Apple content.
Weekly on Monday
Tom's Streaming Guide
Our weekly newsletter is expertly crafted to immerse you in the world of streaming. Stay updated on the latest releases and our top recommendations across your favorite streaming platforms.
Join the club
Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.
Midjourney is a powerful platform, but it hides too many of its impressive features behind random numbers or obscure parameters. The learning curve is intense, but as it emerges out of Discord and to its own platform there is one killer feature it needs to create — a style catalog.
Currently, there are many different ways to apply style to an image in Midjourney and one of the best is referencing another image or using the –sref parameter, appending a random number.
Each number corresponds to its own style — as I demonstrated in a recent test — and with tens of thousands of potential styles, finding what works is a constant round of trial and error.
What is Style Reference?
I just made my own style reference explorer for MidjourneyUsed AI to automatically tag and label the images so I can search them by style, color, lighting, etc and find style codes that fit that vibeIt actually works incredibly well pic.twitter.com/3MumibyPdmMay 9, 2024
Essentially, Style Reference defines the way the AI image generator interprets the look and feel of the image and is particularly helpful if you can’t think of a detailed or descriptive prompt idea.
Nick St Pierre, a Midjourney expert has created a style guide of his own using AI to automatically tag and label images by color, style or lighting and find related codes. The codes can then be a shortcut to replicate that style of image in the future.
One way to use Style Reference is by sharing the URL of a previously generated image. But having access to a library of what every code looks like will be a game changer for Midjourney.
Moving out of Discord
New features like a reference catalog are all part of Midjourney moving out of Discord. It has been doggedly stuck in the platform since its launch, and it was a good way for the bootstrapped company to get ahead and keep user management costs down.
It recently launched its own web interface, making it accessible to anyone who has created at least 100 images in the Discord bot. This includes the ability to customize image prompts using buttons, toggles and text input rather than parameters with more random numbers.
It isn’t clear yet how a style catalog might work but it could be in the form of a button in the prompt options, opening a new window showing different styles and allowing you to select the best one for your image idea. Right now aesthetics on the web are controlled by three sliders — stylization, weirdness and variety.
You can of course still use parameters in the web version, so if you've found a number you like just add --sref <number> to the end of your prompt like you would in Discord. But going forward it feels like applying styles may be about to get a bit more straightforward.
More from Tom's Guide
- OpenAI is paying researchers to stop superintelligent AI from going rogue
- Exclusive: AI breaktrhough could let your next running shoes learn and adapt to how you move
- Meet Alter3 — the creepy new humanoid robot powered by OpenAI GPT-4
