One of the most popular activities in Midjourney is making self portraits with reference images. It's also a very simple process that you can learn within a few minutes.
People love to alter their photos in Midjourney to add a comedic touch, make an image stand out, or let others know that they've taken an interest in AI. It's become a common practice for users to AI-fy an image as a nod to the powerful technology developed by the Midjourney team.
If you want to use artificial intelligence to enhance an image of yourself, I guarantee you'll be able to do it as soon as you finish reading this article. You can then impress your friends or save the image as a memory of your early exploration into generative AI models.
How to Use a Reference Image for Self Portraits
The only thing you'll need to make stunning self portraits is a reference image. This should be any photo of yourself that you want to enhance.
My goal with this article is to explain the process of writing Midjourney prompts for self portraits. With that being said, I won't be using a photo of myself. Instead, I'll take the opportunity to generate a photorealistic image and shamelessly plug my article on Midjourney prompts for realism.
To create a photorealistic image of a man who broadly resembles myself, I wrote the following prompt:
/imagine photorealistic portrait of a young man in his twenties with brown hair, shot with Canon EOS R5, 85mm lens, the man has a short beard and is wearing a blue shirt, he is looking directly into the camera, slight smile, charming --ar 2:3 --v 5
This is one of the generated results that I got from the prompt, and which I decided to use for the remainder of this article.
From this point on, I can simply right-click on this image in my private chat with the Midjourney Bot and copy the link to it. The process would be identical if I used one of the newbies channels in the public Midjourney Discord server.
Since you're most likely going to use a photo of yourself, you will have to upload it. Simply drag the image you want to use and place it in a message in Discord. Send it and repeat the process of right-clicking it and copying the link.
Now that the first part of the process is complete, let's get down to writing some cool prompts.
Midjourney Prompts for Self Portraits
Once the link to the image is in your clipboard, you simply type /imagine in Discord and paste the link. After you do that, you'll be able to write your prompt. Remember to press enter only after you've written the entire prompt.
To avoid any potential confusion, I'll include a screenshot of what your prompt should look like when you're making self portraits.
As you can see, the image link goes first followed by the text prompt. Now, let's see what type of result we can get from the prompt in the image above. The prompt in question is:
/imagine [image link] surrounded by funny, smiling, colorful animated characters, Pixar movie --v 5
The first thing I need to mention is the aspect ratio of the image changed to the default setting. This is because I didn't specify the aspect ratio in the text prompt above. If you want to create self portraits I recommend using the 2:3 aspect ratio by including '--ar 2:3' at the end of your prompt.
The image itself is quite funny. It would make an awesome profile picture on just about any social media platform. It's no wonder that this feature became so popular in the Midjourney community.
This was a fun, comedic experience. Now, let's try something a bit more serious.
/imagine [image link] wearing a white powered exoskeleton made out of metal, warrior power armor, intricate details, insanely detailed, soldier from the future --ar 2:3 --v 5
The power armor here looks awesome. There is a great level of detail in the design of the powered exoskeleton, which is exactly what I hoped to see.
/imagine [image link] medieval prince dressed in a medieval royal outfit, majestic outfit, intricate details, royal family --ar 2:3 --v 5
I feel like this image could easily be a poster for a TV show set in medieval times. You can write a more detailed prompt if you want other items generated in the image, like a crown.
/imagine [image link] wearing a winter jacket, standing on a busy New York City street, it's snowing, snow falling, photorealistic, full HD --ar 16:9 --v 5
With this example, I wanted to show you that you can also change the aspect ratio significantly and still make a beautiful image. You can also easily change the background however you like and add additional details.
That's about everything I wanted to share in today's article. You get the gist of it. You can use your creativity to come up with just about any setting you want your self portrait to be featured in and create an amazing image quickly.
Writing Midjourney prompts for self portraits is also a great way to experiment with the AI model and learn how different words in a prompt affect the generated output.
Final Thoughts
It's truly easy to create good self portraits in Midjourney. You can choose what type of elements you want to include in an image. The best part is that you'll use natural language to do it.
It would've taken some serious Photoshop skills and a lot of time to get the results Midjourney provides you within a minute.
If you want to make cool self portraits in Midjourney, you should follow these steps:
- Choose the photo you want to enhance
- Upload the photo to Discord (either in the newbies channel in the public Midjourney server or your private chat with the Midjourney Bot)
- Copy the link to the image after it's uploaded
- Start your prompt with the link to the image
- Write your text prompt after you've pasted the link to the image
- Send the prompt and await some incredible results!
That's literally the whole process. It only takes a few minutes to complete and will leave you with amazing images you can show off both in real life and online.
