Discover the Game-Changing 'Character Reference' by Midjourney

it seems like mid Journey has finally listened to all of us we now have consistent characters let's see what it actually means it's a huge news for all of us using mid Journey because we always wanted it so what is mid Journey's consistent character as we can see the character reference is pretty similar to the style reference we're also going to be playing with the style and what it is all about but the idea is basic Crux D- CF URL so you're basically doing what you have in an image URL but you're going to have it behind the prompt and we're going to see how it all works out but for now it is also mentioning that you can use-- CW to modify references strength from 100 to zero 100 being default is default and uses the face hair and clothes at strength zero it'll focus on the face good for changing outfits that's going to be really interesting because this kind of a consistent character was always a difficulty with mid Journey up until now we had to use seeding we had to use a bunch of different ways to actually really Force us to get that consistent kind of stable diffusion kind of consistency until now and we're going to put it to the test uh what it's what it's meant for so this is some of the use case scenarios that they have mentioned this feature works best when using characters made from mid Journey images it's not designed for real people photos and will most likely distort them as regular image prompts too CF Works similarly to regular image prompts except it focuses on the character traits so if you know about image prompts which I have a whole video about you can check it right up over there I have gone in detail about what image prompts are they still kind of follow the same kind of a thing so that's exactly what they're talking about except here we're going to have more focus on the characters so if we building like a portrait or something that's really amazing now the Precision of this technique is limited it won't copy exact dimple freckles or t-shirts so we got to keep that in mind and it's also mentioning that apart from both nii and normal mid Journey models it can also be combined with the sref sref is the style reference and for advanced features we will also check that out which is if you want to use for characters with multiple images you can have CRF URL one and URL 2 you can have two URLs together like this similar to multiple images in sty prompts exactly so you're like basically compounding it together and you're having uh a different image from that so you're having a different character trait character to reference from that so that is what it would do now enough talking with that we're actually going to straight jump into it I already have our images that we're going to be using for our references today so this one I have already created using mid journey and this one also I used using mid journey and this one also so all of these three images these two the first two images right over here I'm going to be using for the character reference and then this one I want to see if we can use it for the style reference so for the character reference to actually work what we have to first do is click on the image and then we go right click copy link and I copy the link and that's when I go down over to imagine slash imag and then I would just say any promp so I'm going to say a woman is playing on the beach with the volleyball pretty simple and D- CF you want to make sure that the link you have is also so sometimes this is also important to check whether your link is actually the right kind of link so what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to be checking it right over here whether we have the right kind of a link so we're going to go back so the way you can do that is always just go over here and then you just always just pick up this link over here so it's just to double check always so I always do that for good practice so what happens is this link is always better because sometimes the other link may just end up breaking it so with this we're going to click on enter and that is the CF now the CF essentially should give us the consistent character so essentially we should have her face as the woman playing on the beach with a volleyball and before anything else I'm also going to be changing my settings for now so that it we can get it fast mode and as also mid Journey has mentioned we can also combine the two so say for an example it's not just using e and all the models of mid Journey you can also combine the CRF and the srf so from now on we're going to be calling the character reference is CF and the style reference is srf so for now we can see that it is done that and if you see it does have that kind of a look now the image is very very very very similar to the actual image The Prompt is not so great so what I'm going to work on is we're going to actually add something else over here a photograph of a full body shot of a woman in a photo studio posing in high fashion clothing shot on likea D- CRF again another thing to note which is also a default you should be having mid Journeys version 6 Alpha already if you don't in any case you can always just click over here and you can just get that option but so again I go back here CF and then I do this one and if I want to just let's say add the strength so I do D- cw0 then what's going to happen is it's going to actually give us the strength depending on whether you want more details on the face or whether you just want more details on the overall character so for for if you want to just change the outfit then you want to probably make it for 100 as opposed to zero for this instance I've made it to CF uh weight image character weight zero it is really resembling a very striking similarity to the image that we have over here however it is just a little bit I guess it's just because of the prompt probably but yeah it does look really nice and it's given us actually kind of very interesting it's given us four different styles if you see over here even though I didn't do anything else it's given us four different styles and now let's open let's say I'm going to open this one over here cuz I kind of like this one the third image yeah so if you see this image and if you see her there is a bit of a resemblance actually wow the resemblance is pretty pretty uncanny pretty uncanny a realistic photograph of a full body shot of a woman um let's say full body shot in a street photography style off a woman we don't need the high fashion anymore shot on Kodak HRA 400 and again have this CRF but I'm going to change this to 100 if we want to just focus on that so that's going to change the strength yeah but the uncanniness of the of the face really holds on they have added everything else it does look like a studio shoot like if you actually uploaded this without um without looking into the details it could look like a photo shoot of um said individual even though you might need to tweak a little bit again we're just doing the first prompt to First prompt but the results so far is just like mind-blowing because you are getting a a good amount of control to get more control um it's always a good idea to try the raw mode if you want to get like more control so you could always just add the style raw and we can already see just from the Geto again I'm going to go for the third image over here that it is very very similar to our image over here in fact I've also noticed another thing if you see uh the outfit does not actually fully show but they kind of assume that she's probably wearing something black so they kind of made the entire thing in the similar kind of a fashion now what I'm going to do is just to add on top of that I'm going to copy this link and we're going to play with this exact image so it's going to be the third image that we did for this one and I'm going to go for variation but now as we have mentioned as it was mentioned in the mid Journey section we can add on top of the character reference a style reference so we do Dash Das srf and then we add the URL again for the URL you want to always make sure that you have the URL from the browser because sometimes I've noticed that if you don't get it from the browser it can be a little bit fiddly so it's always good idea to have it from the browser so let's go back again so I'm going to go back again over here and then we go over here I'm going to remove this- Das srf and then we add this so now what should essentially happen is Not only would it give us a fashion High fashion clothing shot shot with the Leica of a full body model that looks like her but essentially it should also give us something that has stylistic Aesthetics of this so what does a style reference actually do we would ask ourselves a style reference unlike a character reference takes the aesthetic quality of this image so let's say the outfit the embroideries the background even the lighting so it would take those things and extrapolate it and create something for our image it wouldn't take the character per se unless I've mentioned character reference and style reference for the same exact image then it would give us that so you you will see what I mean about just in a second now you can already see what I was talking about as opposed to what was mentioned we are not seeing the outfit change but what we're seeing when we did the character reference with the with the style reference is the use of the background now what I want to do is because I'm not a big fan of here something over here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually change the strength to 100 and for the URL here I'm going to go for two so again image weights you can do the double code and you can do two so you're just adding more image weight to that and I'm going to change this to strength 100 kept the character weight the same I want to see if that affects the difference and it creates so now we have more of a permutation and more of a control to actually create consistency one thing which I will absolutely say is sure we get a little bit of a distortion again that is upon trial and error with AI images one thing we must understand it is not a oneclick method there is a lot of iterative process but what would take before a bunch of different seeds numbers and job IDs now you can almost see it's pretty much the sameish we kind of have the similar face of this woman now if I want to get further and further I would probably have to get in more so for this one what I'm going to do is I'm going to probably make this 100 and this one let's say five and then let's again do another variation but you can already see that the style reference has taken a kin with the background but it's added a little more to it so it's added a little more finesse to it but it definitely took in the background so let's say for an example if I just like did an upscale for the fourth image over here it did take the background but it is also skewing the face as opposed to this very first image so there is a bit of a trial and error that needs to be done but one thing that is definitely showing up is the consistency so now we can actually work with this and make consistent facial characters now I'm going to try something else once we get that image loaded is Expressions we're going to try Expressions after this with the character reference of uh this character over here yeah these are much better images if you see these are much better images in that we can see less of a distortion in the face and more of a kind of a personality now that is nice with that all said I'm actually going to be again going back to the original image over here and then just copy that and then I'm going to say a portrait of a happy woman that's it keeping it simple and then again CF and then we add this image now that should be able to give us an expression for that kind of a face now again if you wanted to just have more control the style Raw is essentially what you would need to have more control in your prompting mechanism yeah the images definitely hands down have a similarity like you can definitely say that there is a certain similarity like when you look at the eye color say for an example or when you're just looking at the lips or even just the hair texture there is a certain similarity and uh the consistency is very much there again we can see I can already see before it even loads that we do have like I'm going to take this image over here the first one because I feel like the first one is a good one now if we see this image with this image over here side by side it does look pretty similar to our initial reference image like just look at both of them you can actually see them and you can actually yeah it's like wow the the character consistency as promised is being delivered too now if I want to do like a bunch of different Expressions then what I'm going to do is a woman with a sad crying face D DCF same thing we put put in the same thing and nothing else again even though this is an advanced prompt with the most simplistic prompt lines you can actually get some really consistent facial structures again you might have to be really mindful that images may get a little bit distorted so it's mostly going to be working with mid Journey based images these are all made with mid journey and I'm also going to be trying with this one I want to see if it can work with a different skin tone and I want to see if we can blend the two because they've also mentioned that if you blend the crfs together what would be the result would be interesting for us to see so do stick around for that and we will see how that would work out yeah as it is loading we can already see that the expression specifically the last one is yeah you see this expression as opposed to The Smiling expression and also the original portrait we can see that the face holds it's it retains exact information that it needs I did not add any Image Weight to this one because it's just a portrait and we have a portrait so you can see it's a lot less work for us to actually now create consistent characters which is amazing now that we have that nailed in let's try and get our character the second character reference and you also saw how I added the srf the style reference now I'm also going to show you individually if I just added the style reference to let's say this prompt over here so I'm just going to take this prompt over here and we're going to add that but D- sref and then we're going to go back over to this image and then I'm going to copy this over here that's it I'm just going to paste this image so we're not going to add the character reference this time you'll see see the difference you'll see why it is so significantly different and why both of them together is such a powerful tool if used correctly I'm honestly going to now change this specific prompt we do have a similarity in the face structure and the facial tone but they also made it black and white so I'm going to say a color a color candid photograph of a woman um let's say jumping on a trampoline on a trampoline yeah because the falling one they kind of made it look weird so I don't want it to look like it's it's creating an anomaly because we don't want that so and for this one these are not exactly there but we're going to do something over here so what we're going to do is we're going to actually remove the style roll and I'm going to add an image weight over here there you go so when you do that you're actually adding an image wait also if you ever wanted to just change the stylization raw so you can always just go to settings and you can just change it so you can just go from raw you can just go to stylization row low or medium just like that you or you can just click on it and it'll go it just goes away so I I I removed it for now so when you remove it you're just in the default standard mode yep we can see the retention of our character space definitely um a very very very very uh similar looking face that we have over there I'm going to be obviously U doing an upscale of one of the images so we can have a look yeah definitely in fact she looks much more happier it's a very interesting um concept also that they they didn't show the full body but they're just showing the motion of the trampoline which is just amazing I didn't mention anything else but that is really good now what I want to do is take the same image and do the same kind of ATT test with the Expressions cuz I feel like Expressions have always been uh an interesting space so a portrait of a Confident Woman D- CF there we go that is a good good image reference don't you think like look at the original image and let's look at this image yeah I feel like this image next to this image over here like if you see the image over here with the image next to it yeah it does it does have the resemblance for sure I kind of like the motion on also yeah we do get a little bit of an Abominations over here but it definitely is trying so it so that's the thing with these style reference you will have to tweak it and make sure because it does not fetch everything from the image it takes the Aesthetics so what is it taking let's look what is it taking it's taking the floral patterns it's taking the long hair it's taking all of those things even for for the these images over here when we had the image that you can see for our style reference it took the floral pattern it took the Gown aesthetic it took the lighting aesthetic and when I changed the whole scene it completely also gave that kind of a soft light it still had that kind of a floral pattern so it it matches with your original image that you have for the stylistic purposes that's why it's a style reference this image the first image probably is the closest uh in my opinion and you guys can tell me down in the comments below if you think it's the closest to the image that we have with the original one in regard to the character reference and then we're going to do another one just to end it with uh happy smiling woman with the same character reference actually I have one more thing so we so far we did character reference doing with one character reference URL now mid Journey said you can do two character reference URLs back to back much like image prompts where you can actually stack them up together so we're going to do that with this specific prompt over here where we already saw these images very similar to our original image as you can see but now we want to see if it can produce something else or is it going to create something uniquely different we will have to see that so for that I'm again going to go over here click this image copy it and then we go back over here and then just do a reroll and what I'm going to do is I'm going to go right over here and add another URL there you go so now we have two URLs back to back as you can see one and one over here yeah I honestly feel like this image is like the most closest probably uh to our original image however there is a slight bit of a variation there but they definitely are able to get down the the skin tone in my opinion again you guys can tell me in the comments down below what do you think this image as opposed to the original image does it feel like it's consistent as opposed to um when we saw the this image with our original image you can see that there is a bit of a similarity there the consistency is definitely there and even this image with the original image yeah consistency is going to change the game for sure now we can see what has happened so it has not just created a new character but it has also retained the personalities and the different stylistic things of both of the image and both of the image characters so we have the eyes of our first image reference as you can see and we have like the facial structure from the second character reference as we can see and it has created a completely new character which is a huge Avenue for thought we just don't have to now describe or create images in a whole different way we can actually create a completely new character now she is literally the new character reference based off of the reference that we got from as you can see character reference one and character reference too splicing them together we got her that's a completely new character and she's also smiling so then you can use this and then you can again create a new character that's just food for thought character references is a huge huge update I am just scratching the surface of it I'm going to go much more in detail you can actually check out more updates that I'm going to be doing on my Instagram which I'm going to have it down in the link and you can also check it in my Instagram the non-fungible futurist Ai and on X where I'm also going to be trying and tweaking more cuz I feel like this has a lot of potential I really hope you like this video if you did please don't forget to subscribe down over there and you can also like this video and if you have any questions or comments please do put the comments Down Below in the comment section with all that said you can check out the other video that YouTube thinks is good for you to watch or you can just check out this playlist over here which is a mid Journey playlist for all the previous videos that I have done for Mid journey and I'm also going to be updating that mid Journey playlist with some new work as and when they have an update so this video that you're seeing is going to be in that playlist as well also you can check out the channel if you haven't yet so you can check out the channel over there

Channel: NonFungibleAI By Surzayon Ghosh

Views: 3,882

Keywords: midjourney, midjourney tutorial, ai art, midjourney v6, midjourney 6, sref, style reference, character reference, cref, midjourney consistent character, midjourney prompts, midjourney consistent style, midjourney character creation, midjourney consistent characters, midjourney ai, ai consistent characters, consistent characters in midjourney v6, want consistent characters in midjourney do this instead, consistent characters in midjourney 6

Id: AuS81MsBgm8

Length: 23min 20sec (1400 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024