Midjourney’s Character Reference is here!
Send your Midjourney character on a journey through time and space!
It’s finally here! Midjourney’s character reference was released today. David Holz announced on Midjourney’s Discord server:
“Hey @everyone @here, we’re testing a new “Character Reference” feature today. This is similar to the “Style Reference” feature, except instead of matching a reference style, it tries to make the character match a “Character Reference” image.
How it works
- Type
--cref URLafter your prompt with a URL to an image of a character - You can use
--cwto modify reference 'strength' from 100 to 0 - strength 100 (
--cw 100) is default and uses the face, hair, and clothes - At strength 0 (
--cw 0) it'll just focus on the face (good for changing outfits / hair etc)
What it’s meant for
- This feature works best when using characters made from Midjourney images. It’s not designed for real people/photos (and will likely distort them as regular image prompts do)
- Cref works similarly to regular image prompts, except it ‘focuses’ on the character traits
- The precision of this technique is limited; it won’t copy exact dimples, freckles, or t-shirt logos.
- Cref works for both Niji and normal MJ models and also can be combined with
--sref
Advanced Features
- You can use more than one URL to blend the information /characters from multiple images like this
--cref URL1 URL2(this is similar to multiple image or style prompts)
How does it work on the web alpha?
- Drag or paste an image into the imagine bar, it now has three icons. selecting these sets whether it is an image prompt, a style reference, or a character reference. Shift+select an option to use an image for multiple categories
Remember, while MJ V6 is in alpha, this and other features may change suddenly, but V6 official beta is coming soon. We’d love everyone’s thoughts in #ideas-and-features We hope you enjoy this early release and hope it helps you play with building stories and worlds.”
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Let’s test the “character’s reference” on women’s portraits
I create and post mainly portraits of beautiful women, so I will click on the images in my archive on the https://alpha.midjourney.com/ and copy the “image address” to use it as a start character in my prompts.
First example Midjourney’s Redhead woman:
Midjourney’s Character Reference prompt with this image:
a beautiful woman in a Spring flower garden — cref https://s.mj.run/DcpUE7KNPWA — ar 4:5 — v 6.0 — s 250
The image results:
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Second example Midjourney’s female astronaut:
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Midjourney’s Character Reference prompt with this image:
a beautiful female astronaut in a blue-silver astronaut suit on an alien planet — cref https://s.mj.run/RigC6_vf0qM — cw 20 — ar 3:4 — s 800 — v 6.0
You can use cref on Discord or also on the Alpha Midjourney website. Those images were created on Discord. Let’s hop over to the website and see how it works there.
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On the Alpha Midjourney website I tried to mix two portraits of an African and an European woman. You can upload an image to the imagine command and choose now between three buttons (the person icon is for Character reference):
Here are the results:
Another variation with a Redhead astronaut and the same African beauty — the right image is the result:
a beautiful woman with short hair in a flowers garden — chaos 30 — ar 3:4 — cref https://s.mj.run/ojfNsWNImrs https://cdn.midjourney.com/u/89988642-3604-405a-a1b9-8ff16f18bf27/ee2c9c87d1e408c64ee9991262d8168cffc374bbeabab440fe148c14cf7be543.png — stylize 700
How will you use this new feature? Will you create stories with a consistent character? Let me know in the comments!
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Much love,
Stella Sky
