Midjourney v6 Consistent Style Feature (--sref)
Introduction
Midjourney just announced their NEW consistent style feature called Style Reference. Style Reference is available for both Midjourney model versions v6 and Niji v6.
Now you can create consistent styles by providing a style reference image (or multiple images) following the new parameter --sref.
Midjourney will use those images as Style References and transfer the style aesthetics and colors to your /imagine results.
This consistent style feature is POWERFUL!
If you have been looking for a more reliable style transfer feature in Midjourney, this is the best so far! Whether you are trying to add a specific color palette or cute, creative artistic style to your images, this is a great tool to have in your toolbox.
I think a lot of people will prefer using Style Reference over the Style Tuner that we have in Midjourney v5. The v5 Style Tuner is detailed in this article here and uses the parameter --style followed by a Style Code. It's a more interactive process where you visually select multiple images based on your preferred aesthetics. Midjourney gives you a Style Code to use based on those selections.
This new feature, Style Reference, is a also a big step toward character consistency. Midjourney character consistency will be coming soon via another parameter --cref.
Let's take a look at what you can do with Midjourney Style References!
How to Use Midjourney Style Reference for Consistent Style
Basics
To use Style Reference images in your prompt:
1. Type your /imagine prompt
2. Add the --sref parameter to the end of your prompt, followed by a space
3. Paste in the image URL that you want to use as your Style Reference
In the first example below, I used a bubbly image as my Style Reference and Midjourney applied dreamy pastels to my results.
In this example, I use this image of an underground tunnel. Midjourney applied the heavy contrast, blue tones, and neon highlights to my results.
In the example below, my starting image was of two robots in a sketchy, illustration style. Midjourney transferred the color and aesthetics from this image to my results.
You'll notice that I didn't always get an illustration style results, but I did get a similar color palette. Depending on the text in your prompt, it can be helpful to include words to nudge Midjourney in the right direction. Below, I re-ran one of my prompts with the same Style Reference but I added "illustration" to the prompt text.
If you are familiar with Midjourney's Style Tuner in v5, you'll know that sometimes you need to add an "unlock phrase" to help Midjourney push the style to full strength. I think this is a similar concept here.
Control the Style Reference Strength
You can control the strength of the Style Reference with another new parameter, --sw. This stands for Style Weight and has a range of 0 to 1000, just like --stylize.
Increasing the Style Weight with --sw increases the strength that your Style Reference images have on your results.
It works pretty well for values from 0 to 100. However, I haven't had much luck getting stronger styles with values over 100. This feature is still is alpha for the moment, so hopefully we'll get an update to it soon.
Use Multiple Reference Styles
You can use multiple Style References by pasting multiple URLs after --sref. Just separate each URL with a space. Midjourney will blend the styles that it sees in your image URLs and create a new, unique style to apply to your results.
Set Relative Weights for Multiple Style References
You can even set Relative Weights for multiple Style Reference images.
I would consider this an advanced feature. It is similar to multi-prompting where you separate parts of your input text prompt with two colons followed by a relative weight value.
In this example, I have 3 image URLs pasted after the --sref parameter. I set the relative weight of the first URL to 3 by adding ::3 after the first URL. The other two URLs will be treated as each having a relative weight equal to 1. Compare the result below to the one in the previous section.
Style References ≠ Image Prompting
Although Midjourney's Style Reference feature is one way to prompt with images, “Image Prompting” refers to when your image’s URL goes at the beginning of the prompt.
In an Image Prompt, Midjourney uses all of the content of that image as a reference, rather than just the overall style or aesthetics.
Below, I used my sketchy robot illustration as an image prompt by putting my image URL at the beginning of the prompt. Midjourney used the content of that image blended with the text in my prompt and gave me results that most often contained robots. If that is what you are looking for, that's great! However, this is not what you want if you are just looking to transfer the style to your images.
With the Style Reference feature, Midjourney specifically pulls the style aesthetics and tries to apply those to your results. In this way, it acts similar to using a Style Code with --style, but is much more powerful.
Summary
The new Style Reference feature works incredibly well. I think a lot of people will enjoy using Style Reference and will prefer to use it over the Midjourney v5 Style Tuner method for style transfer and generating consistent styles.
I think it's much easier to use and understand. Just pick your images and paste the URLs after --sref.
The Style Reference feature is still in alpha, so we can expect some improvements over the next month.
Thanks for reading!
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