Intermediate

Midjourney Prompting

Learn prompt structure, style references, artistic influences, negative prompting, and multi-prompt techniques for consistent, high-quality results.

Prompt Structure

Midjourney prompts work best with this general structure:

Prompt Structure

Subject + Description + Style/Medium + Lighting/Mood + Parameters

Example:
a wise old wizard reading a glowing book in a dark tower,
fantasy concept art, dramatic rim lighting, moody atmosphere
--ar 2:3 --v 6

Style References

In v6, you can use the --sref parameter to reference a specific visual style from an image URL:

Style Reference

/imagine a futuristic city --sref [URL of style image]
# The output will match the visual style of the referenced image

# You can also combine multiple style references:
/imagine a portrait --sref [URL1] [URL2] --sw 100
# --sw controls style weight (0-1000, default 100)

Artist-Inspired Styles

Referencing artistic movements and mediums shapes the output dramatically:

Style Keywords

Art Movements:
  art nouveau, art deco, impressionism, surrealism,
  baroque, minimalism, pop art, cubism

Mediums:
  oil painting, watercolor, pencil sketch, digital art,
  3D render, photograph, vector illustration, pixel art

Photography Styles:
  portrait photography, street photography, macro,
  long exposure, double exposure, tilt-shift

Film/Cinema:
  cinematic, film noir, Wes Anderson style,
  Studio Ghibli, Pixar style, anime

Negative Prompts

Use the --no parameter to exclude elements:

Negative Prompts

# Remove specific elements
/imagine beautiful garden landscape --no people, text, watermark

# Avoid a style
/imagine portrait of a warrior --no cartoon, anime, 3d

Multi-Prompts

Use :: to separate concepts and assign relative weights:

Multi-Prompt Syntax

# Equal weight to both concepts
/imagine hot:: dog
# Creates an image of something hot AND a dog (not a hot dog)

# Weighted multi-prompt
/imagine space::2 whale::1 nebula::1
# Space gets 2x weight compared to whale and nebula

# Negative weight to de-emphasize
/imagine vibrant flower field:: dark::-0.5

💡

V6 prompting tip: Midjourney v6 understands natural language much better than previous versions. Instead of keyword-style prompts, try writing descriptive sentences. "A photograph of a weathered fisherman mending his nets at dawn" works well.

What's Next?

The next lesson covers Midjourney's parameter system — aspect ratios, chaos, stylize, seeds, and more settings that give you fine-grained control.

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