2.8 – The Prompt Settings Bar Part 2 Image Aesthetics Lesson

Lesson Overview

Image generation in Midjourney isn’t just about entering a prompt—it’s about directing how the system interprets and visually expresses your idea. The Aesthetics section of the prompt settings bar gives you direct control over the artistic direction, randomness, and diversity within your generated images. These controls are essential for anyone who wants to shape not just what is rendered, but how it is rendered: from sticking closely to the literal description you’ve provided to exploring more stylized, unpredictable, or varied outputs.

This lesson continues your exploration of Midjourney’s prompt settings, focusing on four options: stylization, weirdness, variety, and speed. Each of these helps you experiment and find the right balance between creativity and clarity. Whether you need a faithful reproduction of your text prompt, a set of surprising creative ideas, or a batch of distinct image options to pick from, understanding these settings expands what you can achieve in Midjourney.

Artists, designers, brand creators, educators, and anyone who needs tailored and original imagery will benefit from controlling Midjourney’s aesthetic levers. Imagine designing a game character, brainstorming creative product concepts, or generating engaging educational visuals—all while having the ability to tone down or dial up artistic interpretation, randomness, and variety with precision.

Who This Is For

Curious whether you’ll benefit from fine-tuning Midjourney’s image aesthetics? This lesson is best suited for:

• Visual designers seeking more control over creative direction
• Marketers or content creators wanting images that fit a specific look
• Educators needing custom, clear imagery for teaching materials
• Artists and illustrators exploring alternate creative styles
• Product teams brainstorming several visual directions at once
• Anyone looking to move beyond basic prompts and into customized image generation

Where This Fits in a Workflow

You’ll use the Aesthetics settings when you need to shape the style or mood of an image beyond the prompt text. For example, when a brand requires specific colors and vibes, stylization lets you step away from Midjourney’s default look. When looking to spark new concepts for a book cover or advertising campaign, increasing variety or weirdness can deliver unexpected options to inspire direction.

Suppose you’re testing concepts for a new mascot: you might start with a basic prompt, tweak stylization for more or less artistic input, and use variety to see several different styles at once. After picking a few favorites, you might reduce weirdness for refinement. In group projects, showing team members a spread of options—made possible by these controls—can speed up consensus and creativity.

Technical & Workflow Benefits

Before these aesthetic controls, users relied solely on prompt wording, often generating several separate prompts to get variety or different styles. This was time-consuming, inconsistent, and required extra guesswork. Now, with just a few adjustments in the prompt settings bar, you can produce images that range from literal to highly artistic, or from uniform to wildly different.

For example, a social media creator can quickly draft four versions of a campaign graphic, each with distinct looks, by increasing the variety setting—saving hours compared to manual prompting. Stylization helps keep official materials on-brand, while weirdness can break creative blocks by offering new directions. The speed adjustment ensures your workflow matches deadlines and available GPU hours, a particular help for busy professionals and anyone working at scale.

Practice Exercise

Choose a basic prompt, like "a city skyline at sunset."

1. Generate three sets of images: first with stylization at 0, then 100 (default), and finally 1000.
2. Next, run the same prompt with weirdness at 0, 1500, and 3000.
3. Finally, try generating a grid at variety settings of 0, 50, and 100 to see how different your options become.

After each batch, compare: Which settings produced images closest to your intention? Which combinations surprised you or sparked new ideas? Consider when you might want more or less artistic or creative deviation in your regular projects.

Course Context Recap

This lesson builds directly on your growing knowledge of Midjourney’s prompt settings bar, focusing now on how to guide the aesthetic results of your image generations. Previously, you explored foundational prompt settings and model choices. Up next, you’ll discover even more controls or move into applying advanced prompt techniques for specific project needs. Keep progressing to unlock the full creative capabilities of Midjourney, and continue refining how you express your ideas visually. Explore the rest of the course for a deeper dive into every creative tool at your disposal.