2.4 – Image Prompts and Blending Lesson

Lesson Overview

Bringing images into your Midjourney workflow can spark entirely new creative avenues, whether you're building out concept art, social graphics, moodboards, or experimenting with visual ideas. This lesson focuses on practical, safe ways to use pre-existing images or your own photos when prompting Midjourney. You'll see why copyright considerations are important and get pointers toward reputable royalty-free sites like Pexels and Unsplash for finding suitable images.

The lesson walks you through sourcing and importing images from the web, uploading your own pictures, and strategies for combining more than one image into a blended result. It's helpful for users aiming to build on existing assets, remix visual styles, or simply inject more specificity into their AI-generated creations. You'll also learn how to use Midjourney’s Explore tab for quickly utilizing images created by other users, offering even more ways to inspire your next project.

This skill is valuable in real-world settings such as content marketing, visual prototyping, education, or personal art portfolios. For example, a teacher might upload class project images to create themed displays, or a designer could blend multiple brand elements into a new campaign visual—all while ensuring proper usage rights. By mastering these image prompt techniques, you’ll be able to experiment with more control and variety than using text prompts alone.

Who This Is For

Curious if this lesson will help with your creative process or workflow? Users who benefit most include:

• Graphic designers who want to remix or build on visuals
• Content creators needing to blend unique assets for marketing and social media
• Educators exploring how to personalize class materials or project examples
• Artists and illustrators seeking new ideas through visual prompts
• Marketers searching for distinctive brand imagery
• Anyone interested in using AI to creatively combine photos or artwork

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Knowing how to use images as prompts opens fresh workflows for a range of users working in digital media. You might begin with an inspiration image from a royalty-free library, blend it with your own photography, or remix something from the Explore tab—all as a starting point for Midjourney to generate new visuals. This approach is perfect for moodboards, campaign brainstorming, or prototyping designs.

For example, a marketing team could pull together product shots and lifestyle images, upload them, and generate blended visuals for ad concepts. A teacher could combine class project photos to create lesson slides. By learning this, you add flexibility no matter where visual storytelling happens in your project pipeline.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Using image prompts in Midjourney dramatically expands your creative toolkit compared to only using text. The traditional approach required users to describe everything in detail, which often led to unpredictable or generic outcomes. By referencing specific images—either via URL, direct upload, or the Explore tab—you provide concrete visual guidance, enabling more control over style, mood, and composition.

Blending multiple images simplifies what would otherwise be a complex process in traditional photo editing software. Marketers, educators, and creators alike save hours they would otherwise spend combining photos manually or searching for just-the-right stock art. The ability to resize images quickly using services like ImageResizer.com also reduces frustration and makes the process smoother. Overall, this method is faster, more creative, and yields results tailored to your needs, not just what you can describe in words.

Practice Exercise

Choose a project or theme relevant to your work, such as a new product, classroom subject, or personal art topic.

1. Find two copyright-free images using either Pexels.com or Unsplash.com.
2. Use their URLs as image prompts in Midjourney. Optionally, upload one of your own photos for blending.
3. Add a simple text prompt to influence the result (e.g., blend two styles into a single scene, or ask for a specific vibe).

Once images are generated, compare how the results differ using just one versus both images. Which version better matches your original theme or idea?

Course Context Recap

This lesson shows how to incorporate outside images into your Midjourney prompts and blend multiple sources for unique visuals. It builds on your understanding from earlier lessons about basic prompting, and lays the groundwork for future lessons that will cover more advanced referencing features. Continue with the course to explore methods for controlling style and character references, and see how to fully build creative projects using ev