The Midjourney’s 5.1 quality has improved incredibly if you compare it to the previous versions, we are looking at hundreds of images daily and what really stands out is the incredible level of details rendering. As gen.ericai (@gen_ericai) pointed out recently:

‘It’s all about details… MJV5.1 is so good at it’

source: Twitter

’granularity of the skin is realistic and how imperfections are rendered.’

source: Twitter

source: Instagram

source: Instagram

Those little imperfections however is something that Midjourney has issues with pushing any further, as Col (@LiveBetween2B) pointed out in the recent thread:

‘I was experimenting with imperfection – trying to dial down the very smooth, glossy skin that MJ sometimes produces. No magic bullet, but a couple of keywords (and —no parameters) probably pushed it over the line.’

artist: @LiveBetween2B / prompt: Close-up portrait photography, female face, fine details, skin, pores, minor imperfections, sharp, indistinguishable from real life, natural lighting, medium contrast, high shutter speed, rich color grade, HDR —seed 3856388184 —no hyper realistic, blur —style raw / source: Twitter

What is really interesting is how Midjourney misinterprets skin imperfection as water, scattered light patterns. No water mentioned in the prompt below.

artist: @LiveBetween2B / source: Twitter

This brings us closer to the idea that Midjourney has its own take on beauty. One of the most active prompt artists Nicolas Neubert (@iamneubert) has worked out a study where he examined the way Midjourney comes around it.

‘We all know Midjourney loves to create perfect humans. But beauty is subjective, and that’s the beauty of us – we’re not perfect.’

Nicolas prompted:

‘Editorial Portrait, Beautiful Woman, Photoshoot Lighting, Detailed Face, Black Background, Shot on Sony Alpha a7 III Camera With a Sony FE 24-105mm f/4 G OSS Lens —style raw and generated 264 Portraits and made an analysis.’

Let us just leave the initial study discoveries here. You should definitely follow Nicolas on Twitter to read his findings, followed also by the second part of the study on Niji „Beauty” in Midjourney.

Brunette-Hair: 75% (197)
Blond-Hair: 23% (61)
Red-Hair: 2% (6)
Other: 0%

Light Eyes: 68% (180)
Dark Eyes: 32% (84)

Light skin 86% (227)
Tan skin 11% (29)
Dark skin 3% (8)

Younger-Aged People: 100%
Middle-Aged People: 0%

Wrinkles: 0%
Scars: 0%
Glasses: 0%

PART 1 can be found here

PART 2 of the study here