Most of the Midjourney users must be having a good time while playing with it. But some of them will find it hard to get the image according to their requirement. It is because of the less understanding of Midjourney parameters.
Negative prompt in Midjourney is a prompting technique that allows you to get rid of the unwanted feature or object in the generated image. It is similar to DALL.E 2’s inpainting feature, where users can easily remove the objects that they don’t want in the generated image.
How to Use Negative Prompt in Midjourney
Adding a negative prompt to Midjourney can be done in two ways:
Using the –no parameter
Adding the –no parameter to your prompt is one way to incorporate negative prompting in Midjourney.
Syntax: –no <word>
Example Midjourney negative prompt: curly red haired girl drinking wine –no eyeglass
The above prompt will instruct Midjourney to generate a woman with curly red hair drinking wine without any eyeglasses.
Using Negative Weights
Apart from using the –no parameter, you can use negative weights to exclude objects that you don’t want on the Midjourney-generated images.
Before going to the negative weights, you should be familiar with weights.
A weight is used in Midjourney prompts to emphasize certain objects and features. If certain words are given a weight, Midjourney will pay more attention to those words.
Negative weights, on the other hand, will have the opposite effect of normal weights. Midjourney is instructed to remove all objects and features marked with a negative weight.
Example Midjourney negative prompt using negative weights: a fantasy landscape, using watercolors, include details like trees::1.5, rivers::-1, and mountains, as well as any mythical creatures or magical elements
The above prompt sends an instruction of the whole prompt that includes trees with a weight of 1.5 and rivers with a weight of -1. By leveraging the negative prompt, you can get more tress and less or no rivers at all.
There is a rule that everyone must follow while using negative weights. The rule is as follows: the total number of negative weights must not exceed the total number of all positive weights. I.e, a negative total weight is not allowed.
If not, you will get the error message “The sum of all of the prompt weights must be positive”. If you get this error while using Midjourney, you need to check and change your prompt weighting.
Example 1: A fantasy landscape full of goats::1.5, cows::, lambs:: -1
The above prompt will instruct Midjourney to create a fantasy landscape full of goats and cows, without any lambs. Since there is no weight specified for cows, Midjourney will consider the weight as 1.
If you calculate the total prompt weight of the above prompt, it will be 0.5, which is a positive number.
Example 2: A fantasy landscape full of animals, goats::-0.5, lambs:: -0.5
If you calculate the total prompt weight of example 2, you will get -1, which is a negative number. Hence, you will get the error message “The sum of all of the prompt weights must be positive”.
Which One to Use? –no or negative weight?
While Midjourney offers –no parameter and negative weight feature, it is common to have a question of which one to use.
Compared to –no parameter and negative weight, the negative weight has more control over your prompts.
With negative weight, you can control each element of your prompt just like I did in the below example prompt. Since negative weighting allows you to distribute weights to all of the elements, you can gain full control over your prompt.
Prompt: A bowl of mixed fruits, grapes::2, blueberries::1, papaya::1, apple::-1
Note: The “::-0.5” is equivalent to using “–no <word>”. If the weight is not mentioned, the default weight of 1 will be considered.
Can I add negative weight to an image?
Yes, you can add negative weight to an image. Currently, Midjourney supports adding weights to no more than one image.
To add negative weight to an image, you need to use the –iw parameter. The –iw parameter adjusts the weight of the image URLs against the weight of the text.
The default weight of the –iw parameter is 0.25; decreasing it to a negative value will result in lower strength of the image in your image prompt.
- <image URL><text>: Since there are no weights specified, Midjourney will give 20% importance to image and 80% importance to the text
- <image URL><text> –iw -1: This will result in total elimination of image and 100% text generation.
The negative image weight is useful when you are repeatedly getting the image that you don’t want. In this case, you can include that Midjourney-generated image URL with a negative weight along with the same text prompt. This way you can eliminate the image that Midjourney keeps throwing for your text prompt and get a whole new image for the same text prompt.
Example Midjourney image prompt with negative weight: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1008571191935639652/1052181121439375380/kellyb.jpg anime style, –iw -0.5
The above prompt will tell Midjourney to generate an image, which is a bit less similar to the image in the above image prompt.
FAQs
1. Can I remove object/ style from Midjourney images?
Although Midjourney doesn’t have an inpainting option like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, you can remove any object or style in Midjourney-generated images.
To do so, you need to use –no <word> parameter or negative weighting (::-0.5) in your prompt. By using any one of the parameters, Midjourney will know that it has to generate images without including the specified objects, styles, or any other attribute.
2. How to use a negative prompt in Midjourney?
To use negative prompt in Midjourney, you need to include the –no <word> parameter or negative weighting (::-1) as a suffix to the word, which represents any style, object, or other attributes that you don’t want to incorporate in images.
