Midjourney

A new web interface coupled with Midjourney's inherent power and the quality of its results keep it at the top

- NIGEL POWELL

In the world of AI image generation, Midjourney is a legend. Launched in July 2022, using its own home-baked diffusion model based on Stable Diffusion, it quickly established itself as a leader in the market. This was despite its quirky user interface, where users had to schlep over to Discord, enter image prompts behind an /imagine command and survive an indeterminate queuing system.

Aside from the occasional promotion, Midjourney doesn’t offer a free version. Instead, you must sign up to a Basic plan for $10 a month, which provides three hours of “open public” fast image generation via a member gallery. The three other plans cost between $30 and $120 per month and offer faster generation, private images and access to the service’s “relax GPU time”, where you’ll have to wait for resources to become available.

All plans come with useful editing options. The platform has a two-click out-painting (zoom out) function and the ability to upscale images. These features allow users to expand their images or improve the resolution on demand, making it easier to create high-quality images without advanced graphic design skills.