Midjourney has just launched its new version, 5.2, and it’s a game-changer! There are several new features in the new update, but the hottest one is the “Zoom Out” feature, which creates a wider view of your image and automatically fills in the rest. I played with it to test it out, and while there are still some hiccups – it’s pretty impressive overall. So, let’s dive right in and see how it works.
[Related reading: Stable Diffusion AI adds Un-Crop, a free out-painting tool]
Table of contents
Midjourney’s new features in v.5.2
Before we dive deeper into the Zoom Out feature, let me briefly introduce you to all the new additions to Midjourney 5.2. But if you’re really curious, scroll down to the “New ‘Zoom Out’ Feature” heading. :)
New Aesthetic System
Midjourney has improved aesthetics and gives you sharper, more detailed images. From what I saw in my quick test, they are indeed a bit sharper, and I am seeing more details in textures. Coherence and text understanding has been slightly improved, and Midjourney also claims that diversity has been increased! However, they note that sometimes you still may need to roll more than once to get what you want.
The –stylize command has also been fixed to have a strong effect on the amount of stylization applied to your image. It goes from –stylize 0 to –stylize 1000, and the default value is –stylize 100.
New “High Variation Mode”
Another new addition is turned on by default and makes all variation jobs more… well, varied. You’ll find it under settings: type /settings and click a different variation mode. You’ll also be able to chose which strength of variation you want underneath all upscales.
New “/shorten” command
Ah, here’s something for me. This new command lets you “analyze” a prompt and get suggestions on what words might not be doing anything and which ones might be key. Now I’m waiting for someone to figure out how I can apply this to my conversations.
New “Zoom Out” Feature
And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the Zoom Out feature! All upscales you make now have “zoom out” buttons underneath them. There are two options: Zoom Out 1.5x and Zoom Out 2x; both of them “pull the camera out” and fill in details on all sides. It’s pretty straightforward to use: after you write your prompts and Midjourney generates four versions, upscale the one(s) you like. Then, click on any of the two Zoom Out buttons below each upscale, and that’s it.
As a part of this upgrade, there’s also a Make Square feature. It adds details on two sides to make a non-square image into a square one, and it’s also available in a click of a button.
There’s also an advanced option, Custom Zoom. It gives you a popup text box that allows you to change the prompt as you zoom out, change the aspect ratio, or precise zoom.
Testing Midjourney’s “Zoom Out” feature
As I mentioned, I played with this feature a bit, and I’d like to show you what I got. First, I let Midjourney create a portrait of a Serbian girl in the countryside wearing an embroidered shirt. With this one, I only used the “Zoom Out 2x” feature. I used more than one image for the test, because I quite liked Midjourney’s initial result, but let’s see one by one so you can compare.
Different variations:
But not all results were so good:
Here’s one more. With this one, I’m very pleased with the zoomed-out versions, all of them!
This one seemed to be pretty problematic for zooming out.
It started okay-ish:
But there were some results like this: looking underexposed, or just downright weird:
Then, I created an image with one of my old self-portraits:
With this one, I used the Zoom Out 1.5x feature:
I also tried making one of the zoomed-out photos square:
And then zoom out some more, again by 1.5x:
Final thoughts
I’m pretty impressed by Midjourney’s new features, and not to mention how amused I was using them today. While it does remind me of DALL-E’s “Outpainting” launched last year, Midjourney’s tool does a better job, and I personally find it more intuitive. Although, to be fair, these AI programs have advanced immensely over the past year, and there’s a wide variety of them like Un-Crop or Adobe’s Generative Fill. Still, so far I prefer Midjourney’s results, and we’ll see if the others can catch up. If you use Midjourney, make sure to test it out.And if there’s still something unclear, you can read more about the latest update on Midjourney’s Discord and website.
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