Midjourney Opens Image Generation To 1K Club Users

The wait is finally over! FOMO can now be put to rest. Midjourney has expanded its image generation capability to 1K club users on its new Alpha website.

For those unfamiliar, the 1K club refers to users who have generated at least 1,000 images on Midjourney. It’s important to note that access is currently only available on the Midjourney Alpha website (https://alpha.midjourney.com/), not the official Midjourney site.

Here’s what the Alpha website looks like:

How It Works

Head over to https://alpha.midjourney.com/ and you’ll notice the “imagine” prompt box at the top of the dashboard is no longer disabled. Add your text prompt and hit enter to start generating images.

Prompt: bar, 90s, blurry foreground, with a Hong Kong female celebrity sitting in the niddle shot, shot taking, dynamic composition photography, Wong Kar wai file style. — ar 9:16 — stylize 750 — v 6

Under the “Create” tab, you can monitor the progress of image generation. Similar to the Discord chatbot, Midjourney Alpha also creates four image variations.

Excitingly, all the image controls available on Discord are also supported on the Alpha website. Simply click on an image to expand it and access editing controls on the lower right side.

The ability to upscale, create more variations, and change aspect ratios—it's all there. The intuitive layout is genuinely impressive!

Testing The Image Editing Tools

To change an image’s aspect ratio, click the “Change AR” button. The interface below appears, allowing you to adjust as needed.

Here, I can adjust the aspect ratio of the image. For instance, if I wanted it to be a 16:9 image, I just dragged the slide bar to the right to expand the aspect ratio. Still, all four generated variations remain on the Create page.

Let’s try another editing feature. Here, I’ll use the “Vary region” tool to replace the subject.

Use the lasso tool to highlight the subject to replace and describe the changes you want in the prompt box. After you click on the right arrow button, the request will be submitted, and the results will show on the Create page.

Here’s the sample result:

Honestly, this is mind-blowing. Such a clean edit; it’s hard to believe it wasn’t the original!

Image Prompting Controls

Another benefit of using the Alpha website over Discord is the ease of setting the image prompt parameters. There are now dedicated UI controls instead of doing the usual “/”and “ --“to add parameters.

Click on the settings toggle on the right side of the prompt field.

From here, you can adjust the output image settings, switch AI models, and change the generation speed.

You can even add an existing image as a reference. Click the “+” icon next to the prompt box to access images.

Here’s an example:

In the example above, I used the “--sref” to make the output match the style of the input image.

Why Does This matter?

This dedicated website is a strategic move by Midjourney. Discord was its birthplace and remains great for community interaction.

However, not everyone uses Discord, and some users may find the interface somewhat dense. A standalone website opens the door to a whole new audience. Midjourney will gain broader reach, and it provides them with a dedicated space to implement future features and tailor the experience.

Improvement Suggestions

While the Alpha website is already looking good, I do have some personal suggestions that I think could improve the user experience.

• Add a “generate” button. Right now, users have to press the enter key to start the generation process.
• Label the current aspect ratio on the aspect ratio change screen. It’s hard to guess if the AR I want is already 3:4, 16:9, etc.
• Redirect to the Create page after submitting a prompt or changing the ratio. The current behavior has no indication where an image generation is already in progress or not.

Of course, I understand that the website is still an alpha version, and it is expected that there will be issues with the UI and UX.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I am seriously impressed with how clean, fast, and responsive the Alpha website is. It’s a genuinely good alternative or replacement to the Discord chatbot.

Sure, there are UI quirks and UX bits to polish, but those are totally fixable as the Midjourney team smooths things out for the beta phase.

There are rumors of V6.1 coming in a few weeks, and perhaps even the V7 model in the coming months. With this website launch, it feels like a whole new era of AI-generated images is right around the corner.

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