In my gallery, Black and White, there is this image called “Old Tires”. I came across this on a trip while driving through a small town, where I saw a somewhat abandoned building with some old tires and other junk along the side. I knew there was a photo opportunity here. I love run-down buildings and rustic, gritty items. First up is the original photo as shot. It is ok; I could have played around with the color to achieve a different effect, but I thought changing it to black and white would get me closer to what I was thinking. A straight black-and-white image wasn’t enough. Needed more grit. I adjusted the highlights, blacks, clarity, and texture controls in Lightroom until I got what I wanted. I liked the effect so much that I saved the preset and called it “Dark Alley“.
Recently, I have started experimenting with Midjourney. The AI text-to-image conversion program. One of the new features they have added is the ability to upload your own photos, and then Midjourney creates variations based on what they think the image is. To do this, you start with the prompt: /describe, which will write a prompt based on your image. You then upload your image; it thinks about it for a minute and then gives you four different prompts based on the image.
You can then choose which one to generate. You can do one or all four. Based on the prompt, it will generate 4 new images based on your image and the prompt you chose. The results can be interesting. It may be very similar to your original image, somewhat close, or something that can surprise you. From here, you can have Midjourney generate 4 new images or create variations from any of the 4. If you find something you like, you can upscale it for the final image.
Here are four of the images that Midjourney generated that I thought captured the original image pretty well. Each is a bit different but stays with the original theme.
Once you have an image you like, you can take it into Lightroom or Photoshop and make any changes you like.
This image I liked and decided to see how it would look when I applied my “Dark Alley” preset to it.
As you can see, Midjourney is capable of producing some interesting new versions of the photographs you’ve uploaded to it. This should inspire you to rethink how you can use photographs that you may have considered boring or uninteresting or with which you were dissatisfied to generate entirely new images.
