Midjourney V5 Style Tuner Tutorial - How To Create Style Codes

• What is Midjourney's Style Tuner?

• Why Should You Make a Style Code?

• How to Create Your Own Style Code with the Style Tuner

• Style Code Portability

• Combining Style Codes

• Midjourney Style Code Collection

• Summary

What is Midjourney's Style Tuner?

Midjourney’s Style Tuner is a tool that you can use to guide and control the style aesthetics of Midjourney.

Each Midjourney release uses a default style aesthetic. You can control the strength of the default aesthetic by increasing or decreasing the --stylize parameter. The default style aesthetic interacts with the words (and images) you use in your prompts.

Now you can use the Style Tuner to create your own Style Code. You can create as many Style Codes as you want. Then, include a Style Code in your prompts using --style. The Style Code will override the default Midjourney aesthetics.

There are quite literally billions and billions of styles that you can access by using the Style Tuner. Get ready for this creative rabbit hole!

Don't want to read? Check out my Style Tuner video on YouTube!

Why Should You Make a Style Code?

The number one benefit to using a Style Code is that it allows you to have consistent aesthetics across images. Rather than describing the aesthetic you want over and over again in each image prompt and keeping your fingers crossed that it understands, use a Style Code.

Style Codes are also great for when you don’t know how to describe the aesthetic you want with words. In the process of creating a Style Code, you will pick images that represent the Style Directions you want. The resulting Style Code is a representation of those Style Directions that you can then apply to your prompts.

How to Create Your Own Style Code with the Style Tuner

Let’s walk through, step-by-step, how you can create your own Style Code by using the Style Tuner.

Note: I used Midjourney v5.2 for all examples shown. The Style Tuner is not available for all Midjourney models.

The general process is: submit a prompt to create your Style Tuner, select images in the Style Tuner and then copy your Style Code, use your Style Code in an /imagine prompt.

In this example, I will create a Style Code using the prompt “pastel neon impressionism”.

1. Initiate the Style Tuner

Kickstart the Style Tuner with command /tune. Type in your tuner prompt text and press enter. Below, I typed /tune pastel neon impressionism.

Not sure what to use for your tuner prompt text? I recommend starting with a few words to describe a general style, mood, or medium. You can also describe a specific scene. Both can yield interesting results.

In my experience thus far, giving /tune something broad means the resulting Style Code will have a better chance at working well with more diverse /imagine prompts downstream.

2. Review settings and click submit

After pressing enter, you will see a message like this:

Below your prompt is “Style Directions”. This is set to 32 by default. The number of Style Directions tells Midjourney how many A/B image pairs to create for the Style Tuner. More Style Directions means you will have more images to pick from when fine tuning your Style Code. You can set this to 16, 32, 64, or 128 by clicking the menu at the bottom.

Mode is set to Default. This just means that we are using the default Midjourney style to generate the images. If you usually add --style raw to the end of your /imagine prompts, you may want to change this to Raw Mode.

Creating a Style Tuner uses Fast GPU Hours. More Style Directions = higher cost. If you are running low on Fast GPU Hours, you can earn one free Fast Hour per day by rating images on Midjourney’s website

When you are satisfied with your settings, click Submit. After a couple of minutes, your Style Tuner will be ready. You will see a message (and receive a DM) with a link to your Style Tuner webpage.

3. Access the Style Tuner webpage

Click the link you received for your Style Tuner.

The Style Tuner webpage contains pairs of images (in rows) that were generated with your text prompt. In my case, there are 32 rows because I selected 32 Style Directions when submitting the tuner prompt.

Here is the webpage for this example: https://tuner.midjourney.com/G8u96VB

4. Select preferred images

You can select images by using the rows view or the grid view.

When you select images, you are defining Style Directions.

For every selected image, you are telling Midjourney that you want your aesthetic to be in the Style Direction of that selected image and away from the Style Direction of the other image in the pair.

You can select one image per row, or skip as many rows as you like.

I like to start in the Grid View and then go back to the Rows View to confirm my selections.

5. Copy Style Code

After you are done selecting the images that you want to represent your style, you will find your Style Code in an /imagine prompt at the bottom of the page.

The /imagine prompt contains the original tuner prompt text and the new Style Code. The Style Code is an alphanumeric representation of the Style Directions that you chose via the image selections on the Style Tuner webpage.

Style Tuner webpages and Style Codes are shareable! You may use Style Codes from other Midjourney users and they can use yours. You can go back to your Style Tuner webpage at any time, make new selections, and get a new Style Code without using any additional Fast Hours.

To use your new Style Code, just add it to your /imagine prompts using the --style parameter. Control the strength of the Style Code by increasing or decreasing the --stylize parameter.

Example: /imagine pastel neon impressionism --style 21KDDvXOj0b1N3h9 --stylize 250

Style Code Portability

Now you know how to create your own Style Code, but what happens when you use your Style Code with diverse /imagine prompts? This is where Style Code portability comes in.

Style Code portability is how well the aesthetics of a Style Code transfer to other prompts.

Style Codes can affect everything from subject matter, composition, colors, medium, and so much more. Using a Style Code with your /imagine prompts can sometimes lead to results that do not match your expectations. If we perceive a Style Code as being too unpredictable, we would say that the Style Code is not very portable.

The Style Code in my example above was created using the tuner prompt “pastel neon impressionism”.

Will my Style Code work when I include it in a different /imagine prompt? To test this, I submitted 3 sets of diverse prompts.

Set 1: text prompts without the Style Code (default MJ style "untuned")

/imagine [prompt]

Set 2: text prompts with the Style Code

/imagine [prompt] --style 21KDDvXOj0b1N3h9

Set 3: text prompts that include the original tuner text and the Style Code

/imagine [prompt], pastel neon impressionism --style 21KDDvXOj0b1N3h9

You can see the effect that my Style Code has on the images in Set 2. In Set 3, the Style Code's influence is even stronger because the original tuner prompt text was included.

The original tuner prompt text can be thought of as an “unlock phrase” and including it in the prompt can help push some Style Codes to full strength.

Based on these examples, I think my “pastel neon impressionism” Style Code is fairly portable. The same general style aesthetic is visible across images and the Style Code does not drastically alter the subject matter.

An Example of Low Portability

Sometimes, using a Style Code delivers unexpected or unpredictable results.

I created a Style Tuner using the prompt /tune mysterious forest creature, cinematic, photographic. After selecting images, I included my new Style Code in the prompt /imagine extreme adventure cat and got the images below!

This is a great example of how a Style Code can significantly affect subject matter. None of these images contain an extreme adventure cat, nor do they seem visually related my expectation.

The images may have the same visual aesthetic, because that's the purpose of the Style Code after all. But, this particular Style Code significantly affects the subject matter in a way that yields unpredictable results.

Because of the unpredictable results, this Style Code is not very portable. But, it was still a lot of fun to play with!

Combining Style Codes

Style Codes can be combined to create some really unique styles. To combine Style Codes, just separate them with a dash.

For example, in the prompt below, I combined the “pastel neon impressionism” Style Code with a Style Code that I created for "sci-fi nostalgia, cinematic film style".

Image 1: /imagine moss monster --style 21KDDvXOj0b1N3h9-6tAt17HvTfbpm2R2 --stylize 250

Image 2: /imagine fox made of crochet wool --style 21KDDvXOj0b1N3h9-6tAt17HvTfbpm2R2 --stylize 250

Image 3: /imagine black metal robot --style 21KDDvXOj0b1N3h9-6tAt17HvTfbpm2R2 --stylize 250

Midjourney Style Code Collection

Want to try out some pre-made Style Codes? I put a bunch of my Style Codes into a pdf that you can download for FREE.

The Style Code collection comes with image examples and links to the original Style Tuner webpages.

Summary

The Style Tuner is one of my favorite additions to the Midjourney toolkit. By crafting personalized Style Codes, you unlock the ability to maintain aesthetic consistency across diverse image prompts.

I encourage you to start by using one of my Style Tuner webpages in the Style Code collection. You can open any of these webpages, select your own set of images, and get your first Style Code without using any Fast GPU Hours.

I hope this article helped you learn more about Midjourney's Style Tuner.

Thanks for reading, and happy prompting!