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Midjourney Version Differences

V1, V2, V3, V4, V5​

Let's take a look at the differences between each version using the same prompt.

I am using the official example prompt:

vibrant California poppies

From the above picture, you can actually see Midjourney's evolution direction:

  1. Increasingly rich details and more realistic generated content. V1 and V2 are basically sketches.

    Just look at the rough handling of foreground and background in the fourth image of V2. By V3, the background and perspective become more reasonable, and by V4 it is basically in a usable state.

  2. Higher resolution. Single images from V1 to V3 are 256 x 256 pixels, but by V5 they default to 1024 x 1024 pixels.

  3. More parameters and greater importance placed on prompts.

    This becomes even more apparent in version 5 where previous versions may not have understood certain words such as "marble" for materials. However, with version 5 there is an increased understanding ability.

  4. Artistic style words become more important.

    This conclusion has not yet been officially confirmed; some people even believe that version 5 is a more "universal" version. My understanding is that while version 5 raises the overall benchmark so that it can generate a "viewable" image without too many descriptive words, if you want to generate an image that matches your expectations completely then it becomes harder - you need to understand more about prompts.

Now let's take a look at differences between versions when using complex prompts:

21years chinese girl, in school, beauty, long black hair, sun light，insane detail, smooth light, real photography fujifilm superia, full HD, taken on a Canon EOS R5 F1.2 ISO100 35MM

Niji​

Finally, let me introduce a special version of Midjourney called Niji. This version was actually developed by Midjourney and Spellbrush together. "Niji" is Japanese for "rainbow" or "2D".

It is particularly skilled at generating anime-style images.

For example, if the prompt is "fancy peacock", the left image shows v5 model while the right image shows niji v5 model which leans more towards a comic book style.