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Explorations with Midjourney

If you pay attention to these sorts of things, you might know that MIdjourney is in  an open beta program now. What is it? It's a web app that lets you turn text or image descriptions into images.

TL;DR: the full album is here: https://photos.lewman.com/Explorations-with-Midjourney/

 Here's an example, "Marilyn Monroe in a cocktail dress" results in:

a rendering of Marilyn Monroe in a cocktail dress looking over her shoulder and smiling
"Marilyn Monroe in a cocktail dress" as rendered by midjourney

Of course, you can pretty much create whatever you want, within reason. 

"Statue of Liberty in the style of Theo van Doesburg"

Who is Theo van Doesburg?  Well, he was one of the influences of Piet Mondrian, a contemporary. All great artists steal from each other. 

A downside to Midjourney is they have a secret list of banned words. I only found this out after reading the Terms of Service in full, and running into some of these words while trying to generate some images. For some reason, the word "censor" is banned, so I can't even make an image about protesting censorship, because it's banned. Ironic?  And by pushing too much, I was blocked from the service for a short time for trying to use the word to generate images. 

"self portrait in the style of White Zombie as a white zombie"

I fed it a high quality selfie and styled it as a White Zombie picture. 

I've also worked on photo realistic compositions:

"photorealistic flowers in a fancy vase in a mansion in 4k"

Still a work in progress, but it's pretty impressive so far.

It really struggles with cars, wheels, and animals. It can't quite get them correct. More that it gets the idea, but not the details. 

"Ferrari GTC4Lusso in red on track at Laguna Seca, photorealism, photograph, 4k"

I mean, the general idea is there, but the execution is weak. Even when priming it with a full resolution picture of a Ferrari GTC4Lusso, it wasn't any better. It's the correct body shape, mostly. Mostly the right style lights and grille. The wheels are a mess.

Getting abstract, one of my favorites is this creation:

"A sentient android with arch linux running arch linux on a laptop on a table in a room in the style of Elizabeth Koning, 1849"

None of it make sense, but it all just works, at least for me.

Enjoy the album.