How to use the new Describe prompt in Midjourney

Midjourney’s new Describe prompt will speed up your workflow, teach you better prompting techniques, and use fewer fast?hours.

Here’s how:

Describe was a godsend when it came out. No more jumping to ChatGPT to get the right prompt. And let’s face it, those novel-length prompts from OpenAI were often no better than a simple one. Of course, that depends entirely on your use case, and there are some instances when ChatGPT is absolutely the way to go. For most of us, Describe is your new best friend.

What does it?do?

Describe takes a photo and uses it as a base reference. I know what you’re thinking, “I could do that already with /imagine, Dave!” True, but Midjourney didn’t write the prompt for you, did it? That’s what describe does. It writes four prompts for you, based on the image provided. You can use them as is, or add your own mods.

How do I use Describe?

Step One

Choose a reference image. I found this cool fairycore pic on Pinterest.

Step Two

Instead of using /imagine, you type /describe, like this:

Notice how it immediately prompts for an image to be added. Just drag and drop one. It’s that simple. You’ll notice that the image URL is automatically added. No more right-clicking to copy the image address!

Step Three

Hit Enter and the magic happens. Four prompts describing the image, the surroundings, lighting, style, and colors appear.

Step Four (final?step)

Pick a prompt and tap the corresponding button. Let’s see what the first button [1] does:

Prompt [1]

a beautiful tattooed lady is sitting in the forest with bright blue hair and blue tattoos, in the style of floral accents, light teal and light green, earthcore, elaborate costumes, sony fe 12–24mm f/2.8 gm, photographically detailed portraitures, vibrant florals — ar 4:5 — v 5 —

Not bad. Here’s what the other three prompts gave me:

Prompt [2]

blue tattooed women at the forests, in the style of fairytale-inspired, vibrant florals, environmental portraiture, foampunk, mallgoth, close up, pictorial — ar 4:5

Interesting. It wrote women and gave us consistently two women. These are really cool.

Prompt [3]

tattoo woman with blue hair, costume, flower headgear, in the style of nature-inspired camouflage, kelly sue deconnick, evocative environmental portraits, emerald, 32k uhd, jessie arms botke, master of ink — ar 4:5

Prompt [4]

full body tattoo designs by emily dillard, in the style of evocative environmental portraits, green and azure, tokina opera 50mm f/1.4 ff, fairytale-inspired, margaret olley, 32k uhd, sublime wilderness — ar 4:5

This one is the least successful, as her hair is red now, but maybe the Margaret Olley styling did that? In any event, none of these images have crazy artifacts or additional anatomical features.

I hope this was helpful for you. BTW, here’s the image I chose:

Hope this helps and I’d love to hear what prompts it gave you. If you liked this post, consider subscribing to me so you know when each post comes out.