Midjourney V7 keeps adding features...

A quick look at Omni-Reference

We have seen a number of genAI platforms look at way to maintain consistency for people and objects. Midjourney itself introduced Image Reference in V3, Character Reference in V6 - but the latest addition to Midjourney V7, is - Omni-Reference.

Omni-Reference, added May 1st, is a new image reference system. It has a lot of the CREF functionality, but capable of doing a lot more.

First - what is it?

Midjourney describes it as a system that let’s one declare, “put THIS in my image.”

Where it differs from the CREF, is it not limited to just characters - but can work with characters, objects, vehicles and non-human creatures.

This greatly expands the functionality of image embedding with Midjourney.

Second - how do we use it?

Most of you are probably using Midjourney via the web (or what the long-time users refer to as alpha.) In that space - here is where you can find it.

When you are in the Create window in Midjourney - where you see the prompting bar, you will click the ‘Add Images’ button on the prompt bar. This will open up things and reveal:

• Image Prompts - Use the elements of an image

• Style References - Use the style of an image

• Omni-Reference - Use a person’s likeness, or the form of an object

You will notice that the icons used for these, match the icons used in V6 for Image Ref (image icon) • Style Ref (paperclip icon) • Character Ref (person icon).

Dragging an image onto Omni-Reference - a slider in red will appear along with the reference image you added. The position of the circle on the line (in red) is approximate to its determined location. The range is 0 to 1000.

On the web - make sure you are using V7 in the settings menu.

Drag your image onto the Omni-Reference bin.

Adjust the slider (Omni-strength, --ow #) to your desired strength (0-1000). 100 is default.

According to Midjourney:

• If you want to change the style of the image (such as photo to anime) you should lower the weight

  -–ow 25

• If you want to make sure that a character's face is extremely visible (or that their clothes are preserved) you should try something higher like

  –-ow 400

• Both -–stylize and -–exp compete for influence over the image with omni-reference. So if you have a high stylize or exp value, you must also use a higher corresponding omni-weight value

  a person —-stylize 1000 –-ow 400 --exp 100 –-oref person.png.

• Please note: If you aren't using extremely high stylize and exp you should probably never want go over 'moderate' values of ow like --ow 400 or things may actually be worse

More Insights on Omni-Reference:

• Omni-reference should work with personalization, stylization, style references, + moodboards

• If you want a character to hold a sword in an image please make sure you say that in your prompt:

  a character holding a sword –-oref sword.png

• If you want to style transfer a character and have a low omni-weight please make sure to over-specify the parts of your character you want to preserve

  an anime woman with blonde hair and red suspenders --oref url –-ow 25

• It’s somewhat untested but if you have two characters (or object/character/etc) in your omni-reference image (either in the same image or just in two images side by side) and you refer to them both in your prompt can often get those two characters in your resulting image too.

So you know - this is still in experimental mode. Nobody knows all it can (and can’t) do… yet.

Here are a few examples from Midjourney:

And using myself…