How to Use Midjourney to Create AI Art (Even If You've Never Tried Before)

Go to midjourney.com in your browser and click the 'Sign In' or 'Get Started' button on the homepage. You can register using your Google account, an existing Discord account, or a standard email address. Using Google login is the fastest option and takes under two minutes to complete.

Once your account is created, Midjourney will prompt you to choose a subscription plan. As a beginner, start with the Basic plan. It gives you access to all the core features you need: image generation, upscaling, editing tools, video creation, and the full web interface. You can upgrade at any time as your skills grow.

Note that free trials are very limited or unavailable in 2026, so a paid subscription is required to generate images consistently. The Basic plan is the most cost-effective entry point and gives you enough GPU time to experiment with 10 or more images per session.

After subscribing, you'll land on your personal dashboard with access to the Create page, the Explore tab, and all prompt-building tools. Bookmark midjourney.com so you can return quickly each time you want to create.

After signing in, click on the 'Create' tab in the left-hand navigation menu. This is your main workspace. At the top of the page, you'll see the Imagine bar — a text input field where you type your prompt (a text description of the image you want to create).

Before you type anything, notice the controls around the Imagine bar. There's a plus button to attach reference images or videos, a toggle to switch between image and video generation modes, an aspect ratio selector (choose from options like 1:1 square, 16:9 landscape, or 9:16 portrait), and an aesthetics menu where you can adjust sliders for Variety, Weirdness, and Stylization.

For your very first image, keep it simple. Type something like 'a golden retriever sitting in a sunflower field, soft afternoon light' and press Enter. Midjourney will immediately start generating four image variations in a 2x2 grid. You'll see a real-time progress bar as each image builds to 100%. The whole process takes roughly 30 to 60 seconds.

Don't overthink your first prompt — the goal right now is just to see the tool in action. You'll refine your technique in the next step.

The quality of your AI art depends heavily on how well you write your prompts. A strong prompt follows a four-part structure: Subject (what or who is in the image), Medium (the art style or format), Environment (the setting or background), and Details (lighting, mood, color, texture).

For example, instead of typing 'a warrior', try: 'a samurai warrior, oil painting, standing in a misty bamboo forest, dramatic side lighting, rich earth tones'. That one sentence covers all four parts and will produce a dramatically better result.

You can also add parameters at the end of your prompt to control technical aspects:

• --ar 16:9 sets the aspect ratio to widescreen landscape
• --s 300 controls stylization (0 = realistic, 1000 = highly artistic)
• --chaos 20 adds more variation between the four generated images
• --v 6.1 specifies the latest Midjourney model version

If you're stuck for ideas, click the Explore tab on Midjourney. You can filter by Images, Videos, or Styles, and search terms like 'gothic artwork' or 'cyberpunk portrait' to see real prompts other users have written. Click any image to see the exact prompt used, then copy and modify it for your own version.

You can also drag and drop a reference image into the Imagine bar before typing your prompt, which tells Midjourney to match the style or character of that image.

Once Midjourney generates your four-image grid, you'll see action buttons appear beneath it. Understanding what each button does will save you a lot of confusion:

• U1, U2, U3, U4 — Upscale buttons. Each number corresponds to one of the four images in the grid (top-left is 1, top-right is 2, bottom-left is 3, bottom-right is 4). Clicking U2, for example, produces a larger, higher-resolution version of image number two.
• V1, V2, V3, V4 — Variation buttons. These regenerate a new set of four images that are similar in composition and style to your chosen image. Use these when you like a direction but want to see more options.
• The heart icon (❤️) saves the image to your favorites folder for easy retrieval later.
• The Web button opens the full image detail page on midjourney.com where you can download the file.

To download an image, click the Web button or open the upscaled image and look for the download icon. Images are saved as high-quality JPG or PNG files.

Upscale before downloading — the grid thumbnails are lower resolution and won't look good if you print or post them at large sizes. Always upscale the image you plan to use.

Midjourney's editing tools let you fix problems in generated images without starting over from scratch. Two tools are especially useful for beginners: Inpainting and Outpainting (also called Pan or Zoom).

Inpainting lets you select a specific area of an image — like a blurry background, an awkward hand, or a misplaced object — and regenerate just that portion while keeping the rest of the image intact. To use it, open your upscaled image, click the Edit button, use the brush tool to highlight the area you want to change, type a new description for that area, and click generate.

Outpainting (or canvas expansion) extends the image beyond its original borders. For example, if you generated a portrait but want to see more of the scene around the subject, use the Pan arrows (left, right, up, down arrows shown under the image) to expand the canvas in any direction. You can also use the Zoom Out option to pull back and show more of the scene.

For best results with Pan edits, enable Remix Mode in your settings first. Remix Mode lets you update your prompt while expanding the canvas, giving you control over what appears in the new areas.

These tools are especially useful for adapting images to different formats — for example, expanding a square image into a widescreen banner.

One of Midjourney's standout features in 2026 is the ability to animate your images into short videos. There are two ways to do this: Text-to-Video and Image-to-Video.

Text-to-Video works like regular image generation — type a prompt in the Imagine bar, but switch the mode toggle from 'Image' to 'Video' before pressing Enter. Midjourney will automatically create a starting image and then animate it into a short video clip.

Image-to-Video is more controlled and is ideal once you already have an image you love. Open any upscaled image, click the Video button (or animate icon), and Midjourney will generate a subtle animated version of that image — adding gentle motion like swaying trees, flowing hair, moving water, or drifting clouds.

You can also upload an existing video to Midjourney to trim it or restyle it in a different artistic direction, which is useful if you want to apply a specific art style to real-world footage.

Generated videos are typically short clips (a few seconds), but they're ideal for social media posts, digital displays, or creative presentations. Download them directly from the image detail page in the same way you save still images.

Once you're comfortable with basic generation, two advanced features will significantly improve your results: the Describe tool and Personalization.

The Describe tool works in reverse — instead of typing a prompt to get an image, you upload an image and Midjourney analyzes it to generate four text prompts that would recreate a similar image. This is incredibly useful when you find an image online (or even a photo you've taken) and want to match its style, mood, or composition in your own AI art. To use it, click the plus icon in the Imagine bar, upload your image, and select 'Describe'. Review the generated prompts and use the one that best matches what you're going for.

Personalization is a feature that trains Midjourney's AI on your specific aesthetic preferences. The more images you like (heart) in the Explore tab and on your own Create page, the more accurately it learns what you find visually appealing. Once you've liked 200 or more images, you can activate Personalization in your settings, and your future generations will automatically lean toward your preferred styles without you needing to describe them in every prompt.

Combine both features: use Describe to extract a prompt from a style you love, then generate with Personalization active for results that feel tailored to your unique taste.