top of page
How to fake your photos with Midjourney without Stable Diffusion and LoRa.
I turned myself to stylish biker
Complete guide for Midjourney 5.2
How from this
come to this
and not to this
The process
1. Take a photo
2. Get rid of nonsense
3. Generate new image using (2) as a starting one
4. Swap your face back
Details
1. Choose your pose beforehand. You can't force Midjourney to show you from the side
if you shot straight to camera.
The same for clothes. You can't drastically change color. Black almost stays black and won't turn to green or red.
The same for your facial expression. Though Midjourney can make you smile for more natural look it is better to smile yourself.
Initial image. I'm staring at iphone
Asking Midjourney to make side angle but i remained as i was at initial image
Same side angle prompt but without initial image. Ladies, hold your panties.
2. Make image less artistic. Add "aperture f10" or "iphone" to your prompt. Add "--style raw" and "--no colorgrading" params
It will make your photo looks more natural.
"Aperture f10" relates to digital camera' setting. It gets rid of background blur which is perceived as less beautiful photo
--style raw
--style raw
iphone --style raw
aperture f10 --style raw
aperture f10 --style raw
-- no colorgrading
3. Balance between iPhone and Pro Camera looks. "--stylize or --s" param
Lowest stylize params like --s 50 make photo natural but ugly. Highest ones like --s 750 make photo beautiful but too unnatural and i lost bike at --s 750. I found that --s 150-350 performs best.
iphone
pro photo
--s 50
--s 100
--s 250
--s 500
--s 750
4. Make initial image corresponds to your prompt. Image weight "--iw" param
--iw tells Midjourney how much initial image will influence the prompt. Also there's a big influence of previous param called --stylize or --s. Experimenting with those too led you to natural photo result. I found that --iw 0.5-1 with --s 150-350 performs best
not giving shit about your prompt
--iw 2 (max)
kinda balanced
--iw 1
may be too beatiful
--iw .5 (min)
5. Vary images after prompt
The most interesting results came up not after the prompt but by varying the prompt result
initial prompt
3rd variation of initial prompt result
https://s.mj.run/_rDTEb0kbnY on the road on a chopper motorcycle in leather jacket and jeans, canyon, golden hour, natural light, iphone photo, low angle --ar 9:16 --style raw --s 250 --iw .5 --no sunglasses
6. Bring your face back
I use free face swappers: InsightFaceSwap or roop. IFS is doing great most of the time, but sometimes roop wins.
Just in case, this is how i look like in real life
Midjourney output
roop
InsightFaceSwap
Before or after face swap you may see that face details are a bit off (like eyes looking at various direction). Fix it with free script gfpgan. It also offers upscaling but it makes "photo" unnatural, so set Rescaling factor on 1x. As here i don't see any images that need gfpgan, i leave them as it is.
take care
.
Andrey Aksenov,
July 2023
bottom of page