Graphics Gurl DesignBites: MidJourney V5 Release News
Update: Exciting news! Today, March 15, MidJourney V5 is now live!
The team is working on versions 5, 6, and 7 in parallel, so we’ll see small changes and improvements frequently as we head to MidJourney V7.
In this news post, I’ll go over insider information on what’s happening with V5 and what we can expect from it once it’s released.
MidJourney V5 Release “Rating Party”
Today, MidJourney released the first V5 “rating party,” going out to the 10k & 25k super user groups initially, then, if all goes well, to everyone. A second rating party will follow in the next couple of days.
What is a MidJourney Rating Party and How Does it Work?
During the rating party, users who want to participate will be presented with two images previously generated in MidJourney V4. The goal of rating these images is to determine the preferred aesthetics of MidJourney users. The rater chooses the style they like better and then moves on to the next set.
The aesthetics are boring because V5 hasn’t been given an opinion yet. Each image has various V5 features applied; however, these images are not v5. The aesthetics will be improved before the official V5 release.
MidJourney 10,000 and 25,000 Club Rating Party Message
As part of the MidJourney Super User 10,000 Club, I just received my invite for the first V5 rating party!
We’re doing a quick rating party for the 10k and 25k clubs before deploying it to the rest of the server (to make sure the system doesn’t crash under load). Please help us out for the next hour or two as we test this!
——————– Rating Party Announcement —————
We’re close to releasing our next-gen image system! Before we do it though we need your help
Directions:
- You’ll be shown two images at a time
- Please select the one that you like more (based on your own personal aesthetic taste)
- You’ll get the best rating experience on mobile
- On PC you can use the 1 and 2 keys to select images (1 is left, 2 is right)If you see NSFW images click the other image or press ‘skip’ (Sorry!)
Please Note:
- These images are not representative of the V5 algorithms we will release soon
- These images are plain/boring/unopinionated to help the system ‘learn’ whether v5 should have a different style from v4
- You should notice images are higher resolution and have generally better detail and stylistic range than v4
- If you’re worried about quality, check out images from the pre-v4 rating-party as a comparison to today
These ratings are very serious please try your best to provide us with good data.
Changes in MidJourney V5 Release
Today, David from MidJourney explained what we can look forward to in version 5. Keep in mind that until it’s the default model, you’ll have to explicitly choose the V5 option in “settings” or specify in your prompt that you want to use it (–v 5).
Some of these improvements will be available right away, and others will come later as the team continues to improve MidJourney:
- A better understanding of language inputs
- Less opinionated and more flexible – will listen to you better
- A wider aesthetic range that’s more controllable
- Better image prompting
- Better eyes and faces: smaller details are improved
- Fingers aren’t perfect yet, but they happen five times as often as those in V4
- Images have greater details
- Those details are more correct than previous models
- The MidJourney V5 release will learn better than V4; V4 leveled off at one point
- Robust training and rating system
- Image-to-text features where you can add an image, and MidJourney will give you a text description of that image: it’ll get better after v5 has been out for a few weeks
- The MidJourney V5 release and future versions are going to be faster
- Zoom Out Button: a feature that’s asked for a lot – you can uncrop a generated image by clicking on the “Zoom Out” button (similar to outpainting in other AI art platforms)
- Follow-up coming with MidJourney aspect ratio options and higher upscales!
- Image tiling is coming back in the MidJourney V5 release
One temporary setback in the V5 alpha is that generating images in various aspect ratios won’t be possible initially. V5 will start only generating square 1:1 images, much like V4 did initially.
MidJourney V5 Higher Resolution
A major request from MidJourney users is higher image resolution. The team hears us and is doing its best to make this a reality. It’s coming! In the meantime, use an image resize app to increase the size and resolution of your MidJourney images.
MidJourney version 5 will initially produce 1024 x 1024 images. Although upscaling will be instant, they are concerned about running out of GPUs. The team is working hard to speed it up and avoid lag due to GPU shortages. The final iteration of version 5 will produce 2048 x 2048, but we don’t have a definite date on when that will happen.
One thing that is for sure, though, is that MidJourney V5 will produce sharp details that are more accurate than all previous versions.
MidJourney User Website Improvements
Another improvement announced today was that the MidJourney website is getting improvements. A full-time person was added to work on databases, stability, and the website. This new employee will start next week, so watch for better website performance soon! That includes optimized community image search.
MidJourney V5 Release Community FAQs
Will transparency and 3D be added to MidJourney?
They’re coming in the future, but they’re focusing on the easier wins first.
Will MidJourney have a free option for those who cannot afford the monthly fee?
The plan is to allow people to rate a set number of images for an hour of free time. The goal is to eventually have a free tier where you can rate images to use MidJourney—hopefully, starting in March 2023.
Will MidJourney ever upscale size or resolution?
V5’s default size will be 1024 x 1024. They are working to upscale images to 2048 x 2048. But unfortunately, it’s not ready yet.
How to protect yourself from “deep-fake” with MidJourney AI?
MidJourney will ban people if they don’t like what they’re doing. They also use filters to block images too. So, there’s some accountability when generating MidJourney images since safety is built into the system.
When will the website’s search function work better for searching your own images?
Right now, they are focusing on improving community search. Sometimes searching your own images doesn’t work effectively, but with the new web developer coming on board, it will continue to improve going forward.
Will MidJourney release an API?
They’re trying to figure out the right way to do it in the future. David doesn’t think they’re ready to do that yet since they’re constantly changing algorithms and improving them. They’re also not very fond of people white labeling MidJourney because it dilutes the brand.
When will the MidJourney magazine be ready?
MidJourney magazine ordering will be available within the next two weeks. The first issue will be free. The magazine subscription can be subscribed to separately from a MidJourney membership. Issue one is based on MidJourney V4, but starting with the second issue, it’ll be V5-based.
How is MidJourney updated and changed?
MidJourney is updated and improved based on user feedback. The ultimate goal in the future is to have MidJourney learn, update, and personalize for each user and provide an “anchor style” for each user.
Wrapping it Up
Overall, I love that MidJourney is never stagnant, and the team constantly pushes forward to improve image generation and features. The only drawback to this is learning how to write better MidJourney prompts for each new version. But given a choice, I prefer improvements over ease.
Exciting things are in store for us MidJourney fans! If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to let your voice be heard by participating in the MidJourney V5 rating party. Let the team know what you like and don’t like.
