How to Use Negative Prompts on Midjourney: Negative prompts are items you do not want Midjourney to consider when generating images based on your description.
You can use negative prompts to remove objects, people, or creatures from an image, or to completely alter its background or environment.
Negative prompts can also be used to emphasise your primary prompt by specifying keywords that signify the opposite of what was included in the primary prompt.
What does Midjourney’s Negative prompt mean?
When you input a prompt on Midjourney, the platform’s artificial intelligence will analyse all the words in your description and generate images based on the prompt. In addition to instructing Midjourney what to create, you can also exclude certain elements from the creation process. These are the Negative Prompts for your image, which can be used to request that Midjourney exclude specific elements, patterns, and environments when creating images.
You can use Negative prompts to prevent Midjourney from generating images containing specific objects or effects or to fix anomalies within previously generated images. Negative stimuli, in many ways, serve as an anchor for a ship, preventing it from generating undesirable images. Thus, negative prompts can be used to precisely control the output image by adding or removing details, removing unwanted objects, and correcting deformities.
What distinguishes this from negative prompt weights?
Negative prompts on Midjourney are more significant than words such as “don’t” and “without” that you may use to instruct Midjourney not to add certain elements to your photographs. However, there are multiple methods to tell the AI what you do not want to see in the generated images.
In addition to the –no parameter, you can combine Multi Prompts and Prompt Weights to achieve the same effect on your images as negative prompts. Multi Prompts can be used to divide your description into multiple segments, and Prompt Weights enable you to prioritise each segment by assigning it a weight value. For example, if the image you wish to conceptualise contains more than one subject, location, or environment, you can tell the Midjourney Bot which elements to emphasise more than others.
Similarly, you can request Midjourney to de-emphasize (interpreted by Midjourney as “ignore”) an item by adding negative integers as the Prompt weight value for the item you wish to remove. Negative prompt weights are created by appending a double colon:: at the end of the item’s name, followed by the minus (-) sign and a number indicating the degree of deemphasis desired.
This is how the syntax for such a query should look: /visualisation prompt description> item::-1.5 where “item” is the element to be used and -1.5 is the prompt weight value specified. If you continue to see an unwanted element in the resulting images, you can use incremental negative values to thoroughly remove it.
How to use Negative cues to eliminate undesirable elements
Negative prompts must be specified alongside your input prompt before you send your request to the Midjourney Bot if you desire to include them for image generation. You can add negative prompts to your input by appending the –no parameter followed by the elements you wish to exclude from the results to your prompt.
Multiple items can be omitted from generated images with negative prompts using a single instance of the –no parameter. This eliminates the need to input –no before naming each item to be removed. If you are curious about the syntax for Negative prompts, you should construct them as follows: /visualisation prompt description> –no item 1, item 2, item 3 – you can use a single –no parameter to specify multiple things that Midjourney should omit from the images, so long as you separate them with commas.
Let’s examine an example to see how negative prompts are added to Midjourney input. Before using negative prompts, we recommend that you construct an image using only your preferred description to determine the type of images Midjourney generates. Without specifying the –no parameter, Midjourney generated “a street view of a 1960s American cafe” when instructed to generate “a street view of a 1960s American cafe.”
As seen in the images above, some of the images generated by Midjourney contain automobiles. If you do not want cars to appear in your future images, you can use negative prompts to conceal them from the generations.
Open one of Midjourney’s Discord servers, or access the Midjourney Bot from your Discord Server or Discord Direct Message. Regardless of how you reach it, click on the text box at the bottom.
Here, enter /imagine and select /imagine from the resulting menu.
Now, input the desired image description into the “Prompt” box. Before Midjourney generates an output, ensure that you have scripted this prompt with all the details you want it to consider. Since we already have a prompt that we used to create the above images, we will copy and paste it into the “prompt” window.
After entering the specifics of the items you want to see in the images, you can use Negative prompts. To accomplish this, enter –no followed by a space at the end of your prompt, and then type the elements (“cars” in this case) you wish to exclude from image generation. If you have more than one element to specify in the negative query, you can separate them with a comma; therefore, you can add any number of items as long as you add a comma between each pair.
After entering the –no parameter into the input prompt, select the Enter key on your keyboard.
Midjourney will now analyse your prompt and generate four images based on your description and negative prompts. As can be seen in the following generations, none of the images contain a vehicle.
You can experiment with a variety of negative prompts and add additional elements to the –no parameter to exclude them from future creations.
Unleashing the Power of Prompt Weights for Optimal Results by mastering Midjourney
What occurs when Negative prompts are used on Midjourney?
Negative prompts are a significant criterion when you ask the Midjourney Bot to generate images, and they can be more useful than simply stating what to prevent in your prompt. This is due to the fact that Midjourney’s artificial intelligence is designed to interpret any word within the prompt as something you wish to generate in the finished images.
Even if your prompt includes phrases such as “don’t add item>” or “avoid adding item>” or “without item>,” there’s a possibility that some of the final images will contain this item> because Midjourney’s Bot is incapable of interpreting sentences in the same way that humans can. Using the –no parameter in your input prompt is the only method to specifically tell Midjourney what you DO NOT want to see.
Now that you understand how this feature operates, let’s discuss its applicable use cases.
Case 1: conceal an element or portions thereof
As previously explained, you can use Midjourney’s Negative prompts to remove an element from generated images. In the examples provided below, we have generated two sets of images for each of the prompts, one without the inclusion of negative prompts and the other by specifying elements within the negative prompts.
When negative prompts are used to conceal image elements, Midjourney will ensure that the specified elements are completely hidden. In some cases, negative prompts can alter the composition of the resulting images, as in the fourth set of images below, where Midjourney substituted “reflections” with scattered birds.
Remove images containing text
If your initial set of generations contains images with text or letters, you can conceal them in the resulting images by using negative prompts.
- Without the –no parameter, prompt.Resulting imagesNotify with –no parameter.Resulting images
- A photograph of a crowded New York street by Christophe JacrotChristophe Jacrop’s photograph of a crowded New York street, with no text, letters, or fonts.
- A crowded Japanese thoroughfare at night, Liam Wong-style
- Avoid certain artistic techniques during the creative process
Midjourney’s Negative prompts can also be used to eliminate images with a particular artistic style, ensuring that future image creations only feature your preferred art style.
Without the –no parameter, prompt.Resulting imagesNotify with –no parameter.Resulting images
Ben Goossens-style surreal image of a gigantic Arc de Triomphe gate on the beachBen Goossens-style surreal image of a colossal Arc de Triomphe gate on the beach; no art, cartoon, or painting.
Case 4: Highlight the initial description
Negative prompts can also be used to emphasise your original prompt description, in addition to eradicating objects from your photographs. By including “realistic” and “drawing” as part of the negative prompt, we ensured that Midjourney would only produce a painting of the subject we specified in the example below.
Without the –no parameter, prompt.Resulting imagesNotify with –no parameter.Resulting images
A vibrant painting of Venice’s Grand CanalNo realistic depiction of the Grand Canal in Venice in this vibrant painting.
That is all there is to know about using Negative Prompts to remove undesirable elements from Midjourney-generated images.
