Imagine Weekly – Issue 1 [June 6th]

Author

Daniel Reiser
June 06, 2024

Welcome to the First Issue of Imagine Weekly! 🤖🎉

We are thrilled to bring you the very first edition of Imagine Weekly. From now on, you can stay updated with all the latest happenings at Midjourney on a weekly basis. Each week, we will provide a concise summary of Midjourney's office hours, giving you insights into what the team is working on and what exciting developments you can look forward to.

In addition to the latest news, you can expect a curated list of articles, threads from X, and other valuable resources to enhance your Midjourney experience.

To make this newsletter even more beneficial, we will also include some inspiration and prompts for you to explore and enjoy.

Thank you for joining us on this journey. Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

Office Hours Recap

You can skip the TL;DR; and read the full recap down below.

TL;DR;

🌐 Website Updates: Enhancements are underway to simplify the interface and improve the onboarding process for new users, with a focus on reliability and hiring more senior web engineers.

🎨 Personalization Feature: Almost ready for release, with high tester satisfaction. Debating whether to launch now or after further improvements.

🚀 Midjourney 6.1 Release: Pending due to pixel quality improvements, but a partial release might occur this month if delays continue.

📊 Demographic Analysis: Plans to collect extensive demographic data to explore aesthetic preferences and potentially controversial demographic-specific versions.

🖌️ Niji Journey Updates: Focus on better representation of Asian characters and glyphs to meet regional user preferences.

🛡️ Moderation Improvements: Significant update planned within 30 days to enhance the moderation system.

💻 GPU Utilization and Discounts: Re-evaluating strategies after a discount offer failed to increase usage during periods of extra GPU capacity.

Full Recap

🌐 Website Updates

  • Objective: Improve the onboarding experience for new users without replacing Discord.

  • Changes: Streamlining features into a more intuitive interface, reducing button clutter, and enhancing error and job status messages.

  • Focus: Prioritize reliability for non-Discord users and improve community features later.

  • Staffing: Hiring more senior web engineers for better feature development.

🎨 Personalization Feature

  • Status: Close to release with high satisfaction from testers on the testing server.

  • Decision: Debating whether to release now or after more improvements.

  • Details: Personalization will be optional, not enterprise-level, and off by default.

🚀 Midjourney 6.1 Release

  • Blockage: Release is pending improvements in pixel quality.

  • Plan: May release with just coherence improvements if pixel quality doesn't improve soon.

  • Goal: Release some form of improvement this month.

📊 Demographic Analysis

  • Plan: Conduct a large demographic data collection to explore connections between demographics and aesthetic preferences.

  • Features: Allow users to explore styles across different demographics and create demographic-specific versions.

  • Past Initiatives: A non-binary version resulted in specific color preferences.

🖌️ Niji Journey Updates

  • Focus: Improve the depiction of Asian characters and glyphs, aligning features with user preferences in Asia.

🛡️ Moderation Improvements

  • Resources: More resources allocated to update the moderation system within the next 30 days.

  • Priority: Focus on prompt moderation; image moderation improvements are secondary.

💻 GPU Utilization and Discounts

  • Issue: A discount offered due to extra GPU capacity did not impact usage significantly.

  • Strategy: Re-evaluating approaches to encourage usage during periods of extra GPU availability.

These updates reflect ongoing efforts to enhance user experience, streamline features, and improve system efficiency across various aspects of the service.

Articles

The user, Framer X, recently released an impressive demonstration of how AI can be used to create stunning animations. He has shared his entire workflow in a thread. Although it appears to be time-consuming, it's certainly worth a look.

Since Midjourney released its web UI, I've hardly used the Discord version. It's clear that the team has put considerable effort into creating an intuitive UI. I'm delighted to see that the UI is still being improved and many features are being rearranged for better usability. However, like the gestures on iOS, it may be hard to figure out at first, but once you know how to navigate, it's hard to go back. Check out this post for some tips and tricks on navigating the latest web UI.

As a Frontend Developer and UI/UX designer, I appreciate this website for its technical and artistic aspects, as well as its content. It provides an intriguing discussion on the topic of AI versus Art. The content is neither too intensive nor overly simplistic, making it a great introduction to the topic. It encourages us to consider the potential of AI - what it currently is, what it could possibly be, and its limitations. This website is not brand new but still worth mentioning.

Inspiration, prompts & Srefs

For today's issue, I've gathered some nice references for you to save. All images were generated by us, using either full or partial prompts from the original authors.

Nostalgic Portraits / sref 1016880047

The first suggestion comes from @nickfloats, and it's perfect for your vintage portrait shots. It provides an ideal balance of sharpness and focus. Plus, it features a slightly scratched surface and an impressive color profile.

Closeup of a man sitting on a bench in central park --style raw --sref 1016880047

Crips Close-Up / sref 469710847

This one is ideal for close-ups, boasting crisp, high-contrast, dark colors. Give it a try. Kudos to @doganuraldesign.

Cinematic close up shot of a man --ar 16:9 --sref 469710847

Mediterranean Vacation / sref 2809429389

Our next shout-out comes from @gizakdag. Your vacation photos convey a perfect nostalgic vibe. They have a bluesy tone and lack warm colors. This makes your images quite interesting and gives them a unique touch.

Amalfi coast, italy, beach, 35mm photo --sref 2809429389

See you next week 👋🤖

We hope you enjoyed the first issue of Imagine Weekly. If you found it helpful, we'd be thrilled if you could share it with your colleagues and friends. Please feel free to reach out with any suggestions or feedback.