I’ve been spending a lot of time with Midjourney version eight lately, and I’m just not feeling it. It feels like we’ve taken five steps backward. Back in version seven, it was easier to get images that actually looked good right out of the gate.
That magic feels gone. One of the biggest issues is how it handles prompts. Short prompts used to be enough, but in V8, if you don’t have a style applied, a short prompt looks like total crap.
We’re back to needing massive walls of text to get anything decent. Even with styles, you still have to prompt way more than I’d like. I’ve never been a fan of writing paragraphs just to get a single image.
Moving away from Discord has been a massive pain for me. I built my entire process around it, and trying to put a video together with the same amount of examples now takes me five times longer. The model is fast, but the overall experience is just inconvenient.
I was reluctant to even go exploring this version because I was so unhappy with the initial results. While every other model out there seems to be making at least some kind of improvement, V8 feels like a regression. I figured personalization and SREF codes might be the only way to make this version tolerable, so I went back in.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Prompting friction
Short prompts used to be enough for me. In V8, you either apply a style or you overprompt. I do not enjoy writing a paragraph for one image.
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Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Workflow changes
Moving away from Discord broke my flow. Producing the same breadth of examples takes me about five times longer now. The speed of the model does not fix the inconvenience of the new setup.
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Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Why I tested SREF
Exploring SREFs used to be one of my favorite things because you could find great aesthetics quickly. This time, the success rate was much lower. I went through 50 random codes and selected 25 that I didn’t straight out dislike, but that does not mean I loved them.
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Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Test setup
I kept things consistent for the test. For wide scenery, I used a simple period symbol as the prompt. For the portrait sets, I used four short prompts: high fashion, melting room, neon moss forest, and circuitry rabbit.
I kept them as brief as possible to see if the SREF codes could do the heavy lifting that the base model seems to struggle with. My usual seed number 777 felt bad this time. I saw the same poor composition overlaying almost all examples.
I did not crank up the stylization at all as usual. I am starting to think maybe I should have, but this is an honest test. That was the setup.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Style results
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Painterly and ink
This style blends digital watercolor with traditional Chinese ink wash aesthetics using a soft pastel palette of pinks and blues. It features ethereal hazy scenery and delicate figures that create a dreamy melancholic mood.
Inspired by post-impressionism, this aesthetic is recognizable by its thick swirling brushstrokes and a classic blue and yellow color scheme. The rhythmic patterns create a sense of constant energy and motion, giving everything from portraits to nature scenes a heavily textured painterly feel.
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Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Neon and digital energy
This one is built on a vibrant neon palette with plenty of pinks and purples. It uses fluid psychedelic shapes to create a surreal atmosphere that feels very digital, and it often reads as high energy or dreamlike.
Intense lens flares and dramatic god rays define this hyper detailed cinematic style. It leans into high saturation lighting and deep shadows to produce an epic high budget movie atmosphere across robotic designs and ornate interiors.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Textured and moody
These illustrations take a different path with a textured moody feel using teals and oranges. Fine line work and stippling help the scenery feel expansive and quiet. It has a reflective and grounded quality.
A dark high contrast aesthetic relies on olive greens and heavy textures. The organic details give it a somber mood that resembles a detailed ink drawing or a woodcut.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Graphic and print inspired
This graphic look mimics traditional woodblock printing with a bold red and parchment colored palette. It uses heavy outlines and flat color blocks to create surreal mushroom filled scenes and striking high contrast character art.
A digital take on the classic cyanotype relies on stark cobalt blues and crisp whites. It uses bold painterly strokes and high contrast shading to give portraits and organic forms a sharp energetic feeling.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Anime and pastel
Soft pastel oranges and warm pinks define this bubbly anime inspired aesthetic. Featuring rounded shapes and recurring teardrop motifs, the style creates a dreamy inviting atmosphere like a nostalgic storybook.
Vibrant multicolored dabs of paint are layered to build high energy scenes and textures. This mosaic like approach uses heavy saturation and a pointillist technique to make every image feel like it is shimmering with light.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Romantic and antique
Drawing from romanticism, this look features rich oil textures and dramatic warm lighting. It pairs grand natural scenery like sunflower fields and stormy seas with elegantly posed figures to create a sense of timeless high art drama.
A nostalgic pictorialist quality mimics the soft focus and faded sepia tones of early photography. The imagery feels hazy and antique, focusing on mysterious labyrinths and ethereal portraits that seem to belong to a bygone era.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Monochrome precision
Intricate ink work and sharp black and white contrast characterize this style. Complex cross hatching builds depth and captures detailed cityscapes and expressive character art with the precision and grit of premium seinen manga.
Retrofuturism defines another look with ’80s inspired neon grids and glowing sunset silhouettes. Heavy glitch effects and digital clock motifs create a nostalgic electronic atmosphere drenched in vibrant purple and cyan.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Folk and ornamental
Earthy tones and complex flowing lines create stylized animal and human portraits. Intricate swirling patterns feel reminiscent of traditional folk illustration, using warm golds and deep blues for a sense of ancient organic storytelling.
Dramatic lighting and void like silhouettes dominate a moody cinematic style. Sharp glowing focal points like celestial portals or oversized moths sit against dark detailed backgrounds for a high contrast look that feels mysterious and intense.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Glitter and glow
A shimmering ethereal aesthetic is saturated with sparkling glitter and soft pastel gradients. It creates a dreamlike fairycore atmosphere by blending delicate floral motifs and glowing portraits with a sense of magical light.
Shadows and cinematic teal and amber lighting create a moody futuristic vibe in another collection. Robotic figures and lone animals sit in atmospheric low light settings, giving it a quiet but intense sci fi narrative feel.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Bold graphic contrast
This aesthetic leans into a bold graphic illustration style dominated by deep purples and high contrast blacks. Clean lines and stylized motifs like moths and owls deliver a punchy modern look that feels like dark pop art.
Muted tones and sparse compositions define a minimalist look that creates isolation and quiet wonder. A desaturated palette highlights lone figures like astronauts or children against vast and somber vistas.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Golden and high key
Warmth radiates from an aesthetic drenched in golden light and deep amber hues. Soft focus textures and motifs like fluttering butterflies add magical realism to dreamy cave like environments and classical portraits.
Vibrant yellows and crisp whites dominate another style for an airy divine feeling. Majestic subjects like breaching whales and floating islands come to life with high key lighting that feels pure and uplifting.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Night and craft
Deep indigo and midnight blues anchor a moonlit atmosphere with stark elegant silhouettes. It feels like a modern fairy tale told through paper cut layers and golden highlights, giving each scene a sense of mythic stillness.
Richly detailed and highly tactile, another look captures the dense beauty of traditional tapestry and folk embroidery. Every frame is packed with tiny colorful motifs and woven patterns that suggest cultural heritage and hand crafted storytelling.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Kaleidoscopic geometry
Vivid geometric shards and flowing architectural lines define a final kaleidoscopic style. It mimics stained glass or abstract cubism, resulting in high energy compositions that feel structural and explosive at the same time.
Midjourney V8 SREF Testing: Final thoughts
I might have liked a few eventually with some prompts, but this does not come close to what we had in V7. I am looking forward to 8.1, and I hope it fixes what went wrong with V8 since it is still limited to alpha. I will keep trying to figure out how to prompt with this one.
Maybe it is just my sense of aesthetics, and you might find something useful in codes I did not love. Sometimes you cannot have everything looking pretty all the time. There is bound to be some ugly in the mix.
Let’s continue prompting.
