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Experimenting with Lighting Effects in Midjourney
Learn how to guide Midjourney using specific lighting keywords
Kate Koidan
May 03, 2023
In this newsletter, read about:
🕵️♀️ Lighting Effects in Midjourney
🗞 News and Top Reads
📌 AI Art Tutorial: 20 Magic AI Style Prompts
🎨 Featured Artist: Emma Wise
🖼 AI-Assisted Artwork of the Week
🤓 How to Get Started with Generative AI?
🕵️♀️ Lighting Effects in Midjourney
I love photography! One of the keys to capturing a great shot is getting the lighting just right. So, today I'm embarking on an exciting experiment in Midjourney, where I'll be testing out different lighting effects using fancy photographer lingo.
To help me out, I turned to ChatGPT and asked it to suggest some cool lighting effects that would work well for taking photos of people on the bustling streets of the city. It came back with a whole list of ideas, and I can't wait to try them all out!
Natural lighting: Soft, diffused sunlight or direct sunlight casting long shadows and creating high contrast on subjects and surrounding elements.
Golden hour: Warm, soft, and directional sunlight during the time just after sunrise or before sunset, giving a magical and cinematic quality to street photographs.
Blue hour: The deep blue hue of the sky and the contrasting city lights shortly before sunrise or after sunset, creating a moody and dramatic atmosphere.
Nighttime or low-light: Artificial lighting from streetlights, neon signs, and building lights at night or in low-light conditions, producing interesting contrasts, reflections, and colors.
Backlighting: Light coming from behind the subject, creating silhouettes, rim lighting, or lens flare, adding visual interest and depth to street photographs.
Side lighting: Light coming from one side of the scene, creating strong contrasts between light and shadow, emphasizing textures and details in street photographs.
Mixed lighting: Combining different types of light sources, such as natural light, artificial light, or reflected light, to create interesting and dynamic lighting conditions.
Cinematic lighting: A style of lighting that emulates the look and feel of movie scenes, using dramatic contrasts, color grading, and carefully placed light sources to create a sense of narrative and atmosphere.
Motivated lighting: Light sources within the scene, such as lamps, windows, or practical lights, used to create a natural, realistic, or immersive atmosphere.
Silhouette lighting: Strong backlighting that renders the subject as a dark, featureless shape against a brighter background, creating a sense of mystery or anonymity.
Rim lighting: A light source positioned behind the subject, creating a halo effect or edge lighting that separates the subject from the background and adds depth and dimension to the photograph.
Chiaroscuro lighting: A lighting technique that creates a strong contrast between light and dark areas within the scene, inspired by the painting style of the same name, often used in fine art or conceptual photography.
From soft backlighting to dramatic rim lighting, I'm going to play around with different techniques to see what works best for creating captivating images.
In the first set of images, I compare Golden Hour light with cinematic lighting. Both are quite popular in the Midjourney image feed.
A captivating image of a woman walking through a city street, bathed in the warm, soft glow of golden hour light, her face illuminated as she passes between the shadows of the buildings, creating a dynamic and enchanting scene in the style of urban street photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
A mesmerizing image of a woman on a city street at night, surrounded by the vibrant colors and contrasts of cinematic lighting, as she gazes intently into the distance, her expressive face and intriguing surroundings evoking a compelling story in the style of urban street photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
Golden Hour vs Cinematic lighting
I love the lighting effect on the first image! In the second image, the lighting effect isn't as prominent, but you can imagine this shot as a still from a Hollywood movie – the effect of cinematic lighting.
Next, I created a few images of kids playing outside in natural sunlight vs rim lighting.
A charming image of a child playing outdoors, their joyful expression and lively movements captured in the soft, diffused glow of natural sunlight, creating a heartwarming and authentic moment in the style of candid photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
A captivating image of a child playing outdoors, their joyful expression and lively movements captured by the delicate glow of rim lighting, creating a sense of depth and dimension in the style of candid photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
Natural sunlight vs Rim lighting
Can you see the difference in light effects here? I think it’s not so obvious, but the light in the first image seems to be softer, and the rim lighting in the second image adds a little bit more depth to the photo.
What’s next? Let’s experiment with male photo portraits in the vibrant nightlife of the city.
A captivating image of an old man walking through a city street at night, his weathered face and expressive eyes illuminated by the contrasting glow of streetlights, neon signs, and building lights, creating a deeply evocative and intriguing scene in the style of urban street photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
A compelling image of a man on a city street, his face and surroundings dramatically illuminated by side lighting that emphasizes the contrast between light and shadow, revealing textures and details while creating a dynamic and captivating atmosphere in the style of urban street photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
Night lighting vs Side lighting
Both images are “taken” at night, but the second one, with side lighting, has a stronger contrast between light and shadow.
Next, I used two quite different prompts that created very similar images of a mysterious man walking through a night city, with a slight difference in lighting effects.
A compelling image of an old man walking through a city street, his figure outlined and features accentuated by the dramatic effect of backlighting, creating a sense of depth and mystery as he navigates the urban landscape in the style of urban street photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
A mysterious image of a man on a city street, his figure rendered as a dark silhouette against a brighter background, created by Silhouette lighting that highlights his shape and adds an air of enigma and anonymity to the scene in the style of urban street photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
Backlighting vs Silhouette lighting
The second image, featuring a Silhouette lighting effect, is striking in its minimalism. The reduced details create a captivating silhouette of a man that immediately draws the eye. But I think the lighting effect in the first image, grabs even more attention.
Let’s conclude the experiments with the captivating portraits of two beautiful Black ladies capture during Golden Hour and Blue Hour.
A radiant image of a black woman, her striking features and glowing skin illuminated by the warm, enchanting light of the golden hour, as she stands confidently amidst her surroundings, creating a captivating and alluring portrait in the style of lifestyle photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v 5
A mesmerizing image of a black woman, her captivating features and elegant presence enhanced by the deep blue hues and contrasting city lights of the blue hour, as she stands gracefully amidst her surroundings, creating a visually striking and atmospheric portrait in the style of lifestyle photography --ar 4:5 --s 250 --v5
Golden Hour vs Blue Hour
Well, it looks like the second image might not be a perfect representation of Blue Hour (that magical time just before sunrise or after sunset). It seems like ChatGPT got a little carried away with the word "blue" in the prompt and kept generating images of women wearing nothing but blue clothes. Talk about taking things too literally! 😂
As you can see, these are just a few examples of the many lighting effects you can experiment with. By using professional photo language, you gain greater control over the lighting in your images and create stunning results that truly stand out. Just remember, when working with Midjourney, you might need to get a bit creative with your prompts to get the desired outcome. Don't be afraid to experiment and try different variations until you get the perfect shot!
🗞 News and Top Reads
Midjourney is testing V5.1, a more opinionated version (like V4), which should be much easier to use with short prompts. Compared to V5, V5.1 has:
Higher coherence
More accuracy to text prompts
Fewer unwanted borders or text artifacts
Improved sharpness
Grimes, a popular singer, has extended an invitation to fellow musicians to employ artificial intelligence (AI) to clone her voice and produce new songs, with a 50-50 revenue split.
Despite the music industry's attention being drawn towards copyright concerns regarding AI-generated songs modeled on artists' voices, Grimes, who is not affiliated with any record labels, appears content to pioneer the commercialization of this style.
Could a similar approach be taken in the world of visual art, where established digital artists split the revenue with AI creators, who use their unique style in text prompts?
Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneer of deep learning who helped develop some of the most important techniques at the heart of modern AI, just quit Google to focus on new concerns he now has about this technology.
In this interview to MIT review, Hinton explained his belief that machines are on track to be a lot smarter than he thought they’d be – and why he’s scared about how that might play out.
📌 AI Art Tutorial: 20 Magic AI Style Prompts
In this tutorial, Jenn Mishra, a professional travel & landscape photographer, shares 20 lesser-known art terms that can take your AI-generated images to new heights. With a range of styles and mediums that may not be on your radar, these prompts are sure to give your images an artistic and visually stunning edge that sets them apart.
🎨 Featured Artist: Emma Wise
Emma Wise is an award-winning fashion photographer turning digital designer. It's her passion to help people. Through images, she wants to help people and businesses thrive. Her latest experiments with AI art are breathtaking. See more images @emmawise_ai.
If you want to recommend an artist to be featured in this newsletter, feel free to respond to this email with the links to the artist’s website or Instagram profile. Self-promotion is also allowed 😃
🖼 AI-Assisted Artwork of the Week
🤓 How to Get Started with AI Art?
DALL-E: Creating Images from Text – introduction to text-to-image generation.
The DALL-E 2 Prompt Book – a guidebook by OpenAI that explains how to effectively right prompts to generate images across different domains (e.g., photography, illustration, art history, 3D artwork).
Best Midjourney Prompts – a guide that covers the basics of Midjourney prompts (e.g., which keywords to use to create abstract art, surreal art, minimalism, etc) as well as some more advanced options (e.g., keywords related to camera lenses and filters, imitating certain artists and photographers without using their names). Finally, they provide a list of 600+ creative text prompts for image generation.
Stable Diffusion Prompt Book – a prompt book prepared by OpenArt. The book discusses ideal prompt format, using modifiers to change the style, format, or perspective of the image, applying ”magic words” to improve image quality, adding negative prompts, and adjusting Stable Diffusion parameters.
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