Introduction to Week 8
This week we’ll begin creating images with the popular generative AI tool, Midjourney.
Weekly Activity: Part 1
This week you’ll spend a little time watching and reading about creating effective image generation prompts and then a lot of time playing. Begin by reading about the basics of writing effective prompts.
- Watch this Midjourney Beginner’s Tutorial.
- Read this Twitter thread about prompting in Midjourney.
Prompting image generators is like prompting language models in one key way – you never get it “right” on your first prompt. Be prepared to experiment and iterate many times to refine the model output and get just the image you want.
Weekly Activity: Part 2
For this week’s activity you’re going create images!
Step 1. Join the Midjourney Discord server. This is currently the only way to use Midjourney. If you’ve never used Discord, check out this guide for beginners.
Step 2. Join one of the #newbies channels (by clicking on it) and type /subscribe in the box at the bottom and hit enter.
Step 3. Open the link and purchase the Basic Plan. Make sure to choose “Billing Monthly” – the cost will be $10. Otherwise, you’ll subscribe for a whole year and pay the whole year’s fee ($96)! This will allow you to create about 200 images – more than enough for this week’s activity.
Step 4. Start creating images! These images can be of literally anything you want. Have fun with this assignment. Create images that will delight and surprise your friends or relatives. Or go crazy and create something useful. To create an image, type /imagine in the bottom box, followed by your prompt, and hit enter.
Step 5. Keep iterating and experimenting until you’re happy with your image. When you’re satisfied, download your image.
Remember to employ strategies from this week’s readings in your prompts. Then (1) upload your image into Canvas and (2) leave a comment on your submission that includes the full text of the prompt you used to create your image. Submit these to Assignment 08: Images in Canvas.