Chapter 1: Understanding Text Weights

In the realm of AI-generated art, Midjourney's recent advancements in prompt writing are noteworthy. The platform now advocates for a more natural approach to crafting prompts—favoring complete sentences over mere lists or separated terms. However, this shift can sometimes create challenges in how the AI interprets these prompts.

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Section 1.2: Implementing Text Weights

To introduce emphasis into your prompts in Midjourney, you can utilize text weights. This technique involves assigning different levels of importance to various parts of your prompt through positive and negative values, indicated by a double colon (::). By default, each word carries a value of 1.

For example, if you want to highlight a specific subject, you can increase its value to ::2, or reduce its significance with a value of ::-1.

Subsection 1.2.1: Practical Example

Let’s look at a practical example. If your prompt is:

"a photo of a skydiver soaring above the mountains with a beautiful sunset and accompanied by some birds,"

the output might be visually appealing but could lack the desired focus on the birds. By adjusting the prompt to emphasize the skydiver, you would write:

"a photo of a skydiver::2 soaring above the mountains with a beautiful sunset and accompanied by some birds."

Now, if we further wish to highlight the birds, we can enhance their value as well:

"a photo of a skydiver::2 soaring above the mountains with a beautiful sunset and surrounded by some birds::2."

With this adjustment, the resulting image now includes the birds, providing a more satisfying output.

Chapter 2: Advanced Techniques

Another interesting aspect of text weights involves using values like "::0" to indicate that a subject should be omitted, or using ":: -1" to instruct the model to avoid that term completely. For instance, you might structure a prompt like this:

"a photo of a skydiver::2 soaring above the mountains::0 with a beautiful sunset::-1 and accompanied by some birds::2."

This manipulation can drastically change the output, as seen when the mountains vanish and the sunset is rendered differently.

Additionally, balancing the weights is crucial; for optimal results, you might want to assign higher weights to the more significant elements. This approach allows for more precise control over the generated image.

To further expand your understanding of text weights in Midjourney, check out this insightful video:

Final Thoughts

While Midjourney continues to evolve and improve its understanding of sentence structure and emphasis, using text weights is a valuable strategy for guiding the AI towards your intended outcome. I appreciate the shift towards natural language prompts, as it makes this skill more accessible to users.

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