3.3 – Panning an Image Lesson

Lesson Overview

Panning is a powerful way to grow your images using AI-generated content that matches the original look and feel. In earlier versions of image expansion, you had to upscale first and were restricted to continuing only in the same or the opposite direction you chose at the start. With the current Pan tool, these limitations are gone: you don’t need to upscale beforehand, and you can pan your image in any direction at any stage.

This lesson focuses on how panning can help you expand a scene—whether you want to visualize more of a fantasy battle, a sweeping landscape, or additional context for a subject. The Pan tool is now flexible, allowing you to move left, right, up, or down as needed, creating seamless extensions around your chosen image. It’s especially useful when you want to widen a scene to create a dramatic panorama or add height for a portrait. Panning is a go-to method for content creators who need to adapt images for different formats or who want to reveal what might lie just beyond the frame. Whether you’re building an immersive story world or preparing assets for a project, panning provides creative control over image expansion.

Who This Is For

This lesson is well-suited for creative users who want more flexibility in visual storytelling and layout customization. It’s ideal if you:

• Work with digital art or concepts and need to quickly extend canvases
• Build marketing material and want dynamic compositions
• Prepare educational or presentation visuals needing tailored aspect ratios
• Design games, scenes, or backgrounds requiring seamless world-building
• Want to experiment with AI-generated content extensions

Where This Fits in a Workflow

Panning an image typically comes after you’ve selected or generated your main visual subject. Instead of settling for the original dimensions, you use panning to explore what lies beyond the current borders—even going back and forth between directions to iteratively build out the scene. For example, if you’ve created an action scene but want to show more context on the left, you can pan left to reveal additional story elements. If you then want a wide banner, you may pan right after extending left, giving you control over the aspect and scope. If you later need a square image for social media, you can pan up from the expanded scene to easily adapt the composition. This makes the Pan tool a valuable step for anyone who wants flexibility before finalizing an image.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Before the enhanced Pan tool, expanding images was cumbersome: you had to upscale first, and once you panned in one direction, you were locked into only moving further along that same axis or its reverse. Now, there’s no need for pre-upscaling, and you can pan in any direction—left, right, up, or down—at any step. This means you can create panoramas, portrait images, or revert to a square layout without restarting or losing previous changes. For users building expansive fantasy scenes or wide marketing banners, this feature reduces time spent stitching together separate images or manually adjusting layouts. It keeps the creative process fluid, producing high-quality content that blends naturally with what’s already on the canvas, resulting in faster workflows and more polished results.

Practice Exercise

Choose an existing image of your own, or generate a new one such as “a warrior in a Middle Earth battle.” Once you have the image:

1. Use the Pan tool to expand the image to the left, generating additional background or scene elements.
2. After the left expansion is complete, try panning right or up on the new version to further build out and adapt your canvas.
3. Compare your original image and the fully panned version. How has the narrative or feeling of the scene changed with the new content?

This hands-on approach helps you see not only the technical execution, but also the creative potential for storytelling.

Course Context Recap

This lesson is part of the Midjourney Mastery course, focusing now on expanding your image compositions with the Pan tool. In previous lessons, you explored creating and choosing images; next, you’ll look at other tools for modifying and refining your visuals even further. To deepen your mastery and unlock the full creative possibilities of Midjourney, continue through the course and see how each feature layers together for professional results.