0:00 Midjourney recently launched their version 7 and with it came a bunch of new features including a full image editor which is now available for every subscription tier. One of the standout new features is layer editing. Yep, kind of like Photoshop. You can now add and tweak layers within your images using their advanced AI editor, making it feel surprisingly close to Photoshop's workflow. In this video, we'll test these features and see if it's actually better than Photoshop or not. So, let's begin. If this is your first time using Midjourney, don't worry. I'll quickly walk you through the basics. And hey, if you're already familiar with how it works, feel free to skip ahead to the next timestamp. First things first,
0:45 you'll need to create a MidJourney account. You can sign up easily using Google or Discord. Once you're in, you'll land on the homepage where you'll see a feed of artwork created by other users. At the top, you'll notice different sections like random, hot, and top images. You can click on any image to check out the prompt and settings that were used to generate it. And if something catches your eye, just hit the heart icon to save it. You'll find all your liked images in the likes tab anytime you need them. Now, a quick heads up. MJ isn't free. You'll need at least the $8 per month plan to start creating your own images. You can check out all the subscription options by clicking on your profile, then heading to manage subscription to pick a plan that works for you. Once that's sorted, you're good to go. Just head over to the create tab and you'll be ready to start
1:30 generating images. You'll see all your previously generated images here. All right, so this is the prompt bar. This is where you'll type out your prompt to generate images. Over here on the left side, you'll see an image icon that lets you upload images directly from your computer. And once uploaded, you can use those images in three different ways. First up is image prompting. This means Midjourney will take your uploaded image and use it as part of the prompt. Great if you want to recreate something with similar elements like the same subject, architecture, or vibe. Next is style reference. This one grabs the style of your uploaded image and applies that look to whatever new generation you're creating. So, for example, if you upload a funky illustration style, it can apply that same style to your new images, as you can see here. And then there's Omni
2:16 Reference. This feature literally launched just an hour ago while I'm recording this video. It's an upgraded version of the subject reference feature, and it's designed to create consistent characters and objects with way more precision. I'm definitely going to cover this in detail in my next video, so stay tuned for that. As you can see here, these are all my previously uploaded images. I can easily reuse any of these or I can just upload a new one. To add an image into one of these boxes, you can simply drag and drop it in or click the box and pick an image from your uploads below. You can also upload multiple different images into each box if you want to mix things up. One more thing, you can set the weight of each section by adding parameters in the prompt. This tells Midjourney how much focus to put on each image or prompt, but honestly, that's a
3:01 bit more advanced and can feel overwhelming if you're just getting started. So, we'll skip that for now. Now, on the right side of the prompt bar, you'll see the settings option. First up is the aspect ratio setting. This lets you tweak the size and shape of your image. So, you can set whatever ratio fits your project best. Next, under the aesthetic section, you'll see three key options. The first one is stylization. This controls how much midjourneys creativity kicks in. If you keep the value low, midjourney will stick closely to your prompt, giving you more precise results, but they might look a bit plain. Crank it up and the AI gets more creative, adding artistic flare that could be quite different from what you described. Then there's weirdness. And yep, it does exactly what it sounds like. The higher you set this,
3:47 the stranger and more surreal your results will be. Perfect if you want something totally out of the box. And finally, we have variety. This controls how different the four image variations are from each other. A higher value means you'll get more diverse results to pick from. Now, let's talk about the model section. There are two main modes here. Standard mode adds an artistic touch to your images, which is awesome for things like posters, concept art, or beautiful dramatic scenes. Raw mode, on the other hand, tones down the artistic style and focuses on giving you more realistic and precise results. It's really useful when you want lifelike photorealistic images, cinematic scenes, or just more control over how closely the output sticks to your prompt. Next up, you can choose the model version from the drop- down menu. There's also a
4:33 draft mode, which lets you create images much faster, but keep in mind they'll be lower resolution. It's a handy way to quickly test ideas, make tweaks, and then upscale the final result once you're happy with it. Then we've got the speed settings. Here's how it works. Turbo is the fastest option, but it'll burn through your fast hours pretty quickly. Fast is the default mode. It runs at a good pace and uses your fast hours at the standard rate. And finally, there's relax mode, which is slower but doesn't use up your fast hours, so it's great if you want to save those for bigger projects. Now, if you look up top, you'll see a personalization option. These are my profiles and mood boards right here. So, how do you create your own? To set up a style, mood board, and personal profile, head over to the personalization tab. If you want to
5:20 train midjourney based on your personal taste and preferences, you can click create a ranked profile. From there, you'll start voting. Basically, selecting images you like. You'll need to vote on at least 200 images to unlock your profile. And after that, Midjourney will have a much better understanding of your unique style. Next up, we've got mood boards. These are basically collections of inspiration pieces that capture a specific visual theme, feeling, or style. To create a mood board, you can either upload images from your computer, paste in image links, or select images you've already generated in MidJourney. Once you've got your mood board and personal profile set up, you can actually use them by enabling the personalization option. Then just select your profiles and it'll automatically
6:06 apply to your prompt whenever you generate new images. Super handy for keeping a consistent style without extra effort. Now, let's talk about something really cool. Conversation mode. This uses Midjourney's own large language model to help enhance your prompts. It works a lot like chat GPT. You just share your idea in plain language and it'll craft a detailed prompt for you. And you can either use voice chat or type your prompt and it will continue working with your previous image until you start a new session. Honestly, I think this is one of the best new features in the version 7 update. And in the organize tab, you'll see all your generated images in one place. From there, you can easily sort and add them to folders. All right, that pretty much covers all the key settings and features to help new users get started smoothly without getting lost or
6:52 overwhelmed. All right, now let's dive into the new features that came with the version 7 update, specifically the full image editor, which got a major upgrade. To get started, just head over to the edit tab. Here you'll see the option to upload an image directly from your computer or paste in a link. But if you want to edit something you've already generated, it's even easier. Just click the edit button on your image and then hit open in edit tab. That'll load your image straight into the full editor. I've already added an image here as an example, so let me quickly show you what each tool does. First up, we've got the paint tool to erase or restore the part of the image. You can easily adjust the brush size using this slider or by scrolling with your mouse wheel. Super simple. Next is the smart selection
7:38 tool. All you have to do is click on the area you want to select and the AI will automatically highlight it for you. Sometimes you might run into an error because to be honest, the tool isn't super advanced yet. If that happens, just try selecting a different area or adjust your selection a bit until it works. If you want to exclude part of the selection, just click the little plus icon to remove that section. Once you've made your selection, you can erase the background or the subject, pretty much exactly like you would in Photoshop. Then we've got the move or resize tool. This lets you extend the canvas, move your image around, or resize it just by dragging the edges wherever you want. You can also quickly pick a preset aspect ratio from the list if you need a specific format. And of course, there are also the undo, redo, and reset tools for quick fixes if you
8:25 make a mistake or want to start fresh. Now, I'm going to click the add button in the layers panel and upload an image of a dog. I'll quickly resize it to fit and then use the smart select tool to select just the dog. Once that's done, I'll hit erase background to cut it out cleanly. Next, I'll grab the paintbrush tool and roughly erase around the edges of the dog to help it blend in better with the background. I'll also select the background layer and erase a bit around the dog's shape to give MidJourney some creative space to seamlessly merge both images. Now for the fun part, I'll type in a simple prompt, a dog swimming in the ocean. I'll check my settings, adjust the aspect ratio, and hit submit edit. It'll take a bit of time to process, and here's the result. As you can see, the dog is blended into the ocean scene
9:10 really nicely. The only thing is the lighting between the dog and the ocean isn't a perfect match. And right now, Midjourney doesn't give us any direct tools to fix that. But here's where we can get creative with the retexture feature. I'll switch over to the retexture tab. Basically, all you have to do here is describe the style or texture you want in the prompt. So, I'll just add moody cinematic photograph to my original prompt and hit the submit retexture button. And check this out. The lighting looks way more realistic now. All four images came out super polished and cinematic. The only thing to note is that while the dog and the ocean are still in the same position, their appearance has changed a bit because of the retexturing, but overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. The vibe is awesome. All right, here's another example. This time, I'm starting with a
9:56 beautiful landscape image. Now I'm going to add an image of a cyberpunk girl. Just like before, I'll resize her to fit the scene. Use the smart select tool to select the girl and then erase the background. I notice there's a bit of leftover around the edges. So I'll clean that up using the brush tool to make sure everything looks neat. Then I'll select the background image and erase a bit around her shape. Again, this helps midjourney blend her into the scene more naturally. Let's also add a spaceship image. And I'll repeat the same steps. Resize, select, erase the background, and clean up any rough edges. Now, for the prompt, I'm keeping it super simple. You don't need to overthink it here. Just describe what's in your image in a clear, straightforward way. You can also use this little icon here to automatically generate a prompt for your
10:41 image. But keep in mind, it only generates a prompt for the selected layer, so you'll want to use it accordingly. Another cool trick, you can upload or drag an image directly into the describe option. And Midjourney will give you four prompt suggestions based on that image. Definitely worth trying out if you need some inspiration or aren't sure how to word your prompt. Now, I'll double check my settings and hit submit edit. All right, as you can see, the results look pretty solid. There's still a bit of an issue with the lighting, though, so let's jump back into the retexture tab and see if we can improve it. This time I'm just going to add digital painting illustration style to the prompt. And here are the results. Honestly, retexturing really changes the appearance, but it does an amazing job of transforming the style of the image.
11:28 All the generations turned out really well. These are the results when I added a hyperrealistic photograph. And again, in terms of aesthetics and overall vibe, these images look amazing. But honestly, I don't know why. Even in 2025, MidJourney still behaves like it's using models from 2021. You can still spot things like watermarks popping up even in version 7. But anyway, I've got to say, I really love how these retextured results turned out. All right, now let me show you how to use an image as a style reference in retexture mode. I'll just click on this image icon. This is the gallery of my previously uploaded images. And now I'm going to select this motion blur photographic image as my style reference. And this time I'm not adding any extra style to the prompt.
12:13 I'll just hit submit retexture. And there we go. Just look at these results. They're super realistic and the style perfectly matches the reference image. Even the spaceship looks incredibly real. This really shows how many creative possibilities you have with this tool. For example, here's another style image. And as I mentioned before, you can mix and match almost anything. There are no creative boundaries with this. Now, if we compare this layer editor to Photoshop, let's be real, there's no way this is better than Photoshop. But honestly, I think if MJ has released this feature, they're probably planning to keep improving it in future updates. What I do love though is the combo of layer editing and retexture mode. You can get really creative with that. Just play around with different styles and you might end up creating something incredible. And
13:00 that's a quick look at the new MidJourney V7 features. Hope this helped you get started. Don't forget to like and subscribe for the upcoming amazing videos. See you in the next one.
