Midjourney 8.1: main new features
Here’s what immediately catches your eye with v8.1:
- Lightning-fast HD mode: HD mode is now 3x faster and 3x cheaper. It’s so convenient that it became the default for V8.1. This speed is truly incredible: new images are created in just 4 or 5 seconds. A huge leap, if we think that not long ago the same images required 30 or 45 seconds to be generated, with a quality even lower than today.
- Optimized Credits: Not only do our images take less time, but credit usage is also lower, decreased by 25% for generating a new image compared to previous versions. Which means that, with the same subscription, we can generate a significantly greater number of images.
- Comprehension and quality: They have significantly improved the reading of prompts and the overall quality of the images.
The Great Debate: Midjourney vs. Gemini
After this part of the analysis, I would like to make a brief comparison. I know many have moved to Gemini or GPT in their imaging at the moment. In some ways, these platforms offer greater quality, especially when it comes to inserting real and contextualized objects.
However, I find that Midjourney is still of fundamental importance for the creative and concept phase. When we look for the right atmosphere or need to mix different styles, Midjourney allows us to visualize variations of ideas in a much simpler and more immediate way. Very often, in fact, on Gemini we find ourselves a little “stuck” in this exploratory direction: response times are longer, the machine struggles to follow our stylistic details properly and, creating one at a time, varying from that first generation to explore different paths is very difficult and frustrating.
This is why I believe that Midjourney is still the best engine for maintaining a smooth work process in the initial phase. He provides us with modeling clay. Gemini, on the other hand, gives a very important contribution regarding a secondary phase of project refinement, where many things are already “stable” and fixed, and we need extreme realism.
In summary
Managing AI does not mean looking for a magical tool that does everything, but understanding how to orchestrate this software so that the result is consistent with our idea. Midjourney 8.1 gives us back valuable time during the concept phase, allowing us to explore faster at less cost. Until next viewing and testing!
The weekly column “Architectural Prompting” is edited by experts Luciana Mastrolia, Giovanna Panucci and Andrea Tinazzo
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