Photorealistic Midjourney Portrait Prompts

How to create natural, photorealistic and lifelike portraits in Midjourney V4, V5, V5.1 or V5.2

Learn How to use Midjourney in this other tutorial!

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It's not always obvious how to make better portraits in Midjourney. Taming the AI prompts can sometimes feel like fighting a bear in the wild.

Here's one idea you can start using in your portrait prompts:

Changing backdrop from "cornfield" to, let's say, "street photography" will affect pose and clothing style of the subject, at least to some degree. So keep that in mind!

In our previous Midjourney Prompt Tutorial Part I we learned basics of portrait creation with Midjourney's Discord bot. In this article we will expand on creating photorealistic portraits.

Lately, making art with Midjourney has been evolving from "telling it what to paint", to triggerting well-defined themes by understanding age-tested industry keywords.

Want to make realistic portraits? You better know your 85mm lens and aperture settings.

Midjourney AI is trained on billions of images, including those in the area of portrait photography. To trigger a good portrait prompt, you might want to understand tips and tricks learned from professional portrait photographers.

Lifelike Midjourney Portrait Prompt Tips

To create photorealistic Midjourney portrait, follow these steps:

1. Use keywords like candid and personal to recreate natural look.
2. Use 85mm, 100mm or even 200mm lens (to isolate portait subjects.)
3. Use specific camera model like Sony α7 III, Nikon D850 DSLR 4k, Canon EOS R5, Hasselblad.
4. Use F 1.2, which is special aperture setting for blurry backgrounds.
5. Add blurry backdrop hints like: cornfield, abandoned church, street photo at night.
6. Use dreamlike lighting, dramatic lighting, ultra-detailed, personal portrait, etc.
7. Use --testp to put Midjourney into photorealism mode.
8. Use --ar 9:16 aspect ratio.

In addition you can experiment with Vermeer lighting, or Rembrand lighting. Just an idea. Both oil paint artists had used atmospheric light for creative advantage.

Show Me The Prompt

Keep in mind, these prompts won't always generate a perfect portrait as shown in this article. I had to generate many examples and be careful about my final picks.

If at first it doesn't work out, keep generating. Sometimes you might even have to generate 3, 5 or even 10 portraits just to get one outstanding result.

Photorealistic Portrait 1: Girl in corn field

Here is an example of an image generated by this prompt:

Photorealistic Portrait 2: Another girl in the cornfield

Here is an example of an image generated by this prompt:

Now let's change the background theme!

Photorealistic Portrait 3: Girl on the street

Similar to previous prompt, but changed "cornfield" to "street photography."

One of the images produced by this prompt:

How were these hyper realistic portraits were generated in Midjourney?

Who are the heros of photorealistic portraits? That's right. It's real life portrait photographers.

So by understanding professional photography, lens types and what is aperture, you can improve the quality and photorealism of your Midjourney prompts.

Creating captivating portraits can be a challenging task even for professional photographers. If you want to make photo realistic portraits with Midjourney, it's important to understand a few basic things about portrait photography itself, outside of AI-generated images.

Also know your environments: street photo at night, ocean beach, abandoned church, be creative!

Photorealistic Portrait 4: Stella Sky's Midjourney Portraits

Here we can learn something about photorealistic Midjourney portraits from Stella Sky's prompts. Sometimes simplicity is our best friend.

Here's the image produced by this prompt:

Photorealistic Portrait 5: Full Body Midjourney Portrait (Generated by Stella Sky)

Some people are wondering how to generate full length body portraits, or at least waist level portraits. You can use the phrase "standing on the beach" to make the body fit more into the boundaries of your portrait, as shown in the following midjourney portrait prompt:

Here Tony Diterlizzi, is an American fantasy artist, maker of children's books and motion picture producer. He is also known for collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. Adding his name to the prompt copied over his lighthearted style:

What other tips and tricks that apply to portrait photography?

To make better portraits in Midjourney, follow these ideas:

• Lighting: good lighting can make or break a portrait. Natural light, window light, and soft box lights are great options for portrait photography.
• Use shallow depth of field: a shallow depth of field helps to blur the background and put the focus on the subject. This is what 85mm lense is for. Also use F 1.2 aperture setting.
• Focus on eyes: the eyes are the most important feature in a portrait, so make sure they are sharp and in focus.
• Simplify background: a simple background helps to keep the focus on the subject and avoids distractions. Shallow depth of field can also make it blurry which is perfect for isolating subject in portrait photography.
• Capture genuine emotions: try to capture real emotions, such as laughter, joy, or sadness, to add depth and character to your portraits.
• Try different poses: experiment with different poses, such as standing, sitting, or leaning, to add variety to your portraits.
• Use props: props, such as hats, sunglasses, or flowers, can add an extra dimension to your portraits and tell a story about the subject.
• Play with perspective: change the perspective by getting close or shooting from above or below to add interest to your portraits.

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