March 16, 2023 (UTC) – The eagerly awaited Midjourney v5 AI art generator has made its grand debut, offering a multitude of exciting new features to revolutionize the world of AI-driven art creation. Midjourney shared the news with their enthusiastic community via a Twitter announcement:
Starting today, our community can test Midjourney V5. It boasts significantly enhanced image quality, more diverse outputs, a broader stylistic range, support for seamless textures, wider aspect ratios, improved image prompting, an expanded dynamic range, and much more.
The overwhelming anticipation and excitement surrounding the release of Midjourney v5 have indeed resulted in an unprecedented surge of interest from users worldwide. This tremendous influx of traffic has, unfortunately, led to the temporary collapse of Midjourney’s server, leaving countless users unable to access the platform.
See also: Midjourney Easy Beginner’s Guide
The fact that the server crashed under the weight of such demand is a testament to the immense popularity and high expectations surrounding Midjourney v5.
As an avid fan of the AI art scene, I was eager to put the latest version of Midjourney to the test, examining whether this groundbreaking model truly delivers on its promises.
Also check out: Midjourney V4 vs V5
More Photorealistic
Midjourney v5 images are more photorealistic than previous versions, able to turn even unpopular characters into stunningly lifelike visuals. The AI’s ability to interpret and create detailed, true-to-life images has been refined to an exceptional degree, I daresay, that it looks more like a vast upgrade to Dall-E 2 than MJ.
We know Dall-E generates more hyperrealistic images than MJ v4, but v5 just blows it out of the water. While Dall-E surpassed MJ v4 in terms of realism, the release of v5 has taken the game to a whole new level, outshining its predecessor and Dall-E.
Unlike Dall-E, which usually messes up output images, v5 significantly reduces the number of imperfections (which we shall go through later).
Let’s take a look at this prompt for example:
While v4 produced CGI-like images of Elon Musk, v5 is indistinguishable from reality. If I didn’t tell you that the bottom images were AI-generated, you wouldn’t know.
Another example is with the popular Wednesday from the Addams family:
By now, you probably see a major difference right? You could try this out with different characters or prompts and v5 will show a more true-to-life version 8 times out of 10.
Now let’s get back to the imperfections we talked about earlier in the next section.
Hands and Eyes Have Improved
One persistent challenge that has plagued AI art generators across the board is their struggle to accurately depict hands and, to a lesser extent, eyes. These complex and highly expressive body parts have proven to be particularly tricky for AI to render convincingly. But with v5, significant progress has been made in overcoming these obstacles, though there remains some room for further improvement.
Check out some v5 generations below:
You can definitely tell it’s been fine-tuned a bit more to allow for a more natural and anatomically accurate portrayal of hands. But don’t expect this to work every time.
Not Necessarily Better, Just Different
Now, Midjourney v5 has just been released and I barely scratched the surface of what it’s truly capable of. But one thing is clear: in some cases, I still prefer v4 generations to v5.
Why?
V4 produces more “art-like” images while v5 generations look more like photographs. Both are useful and fun in their own respects, so I recommend you play around with both to determine your preference. But as an art generator, I prefer v4 for its aesthetics and stunningly beautiful generations.
V5 is quite better though if you plan to sell stock photos.
See also:
- 4 Ways to Make Money Selling AI Art
- Midjourney Art Styles GigaPack: FREE 200 Prompt Keywords
- 16 Innovative Use Cases of AI-Generated Art in 2023 (w/ Examples)
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