Midjourney User Guide: Creating a Channel, Setting Parameters, and Your First Image Generation Guide

This Midjourney tutorial explains, in the exact order beginners actually follow, how to log in, bring the Midjourney bot into a channel, generate your first image with /imagine, and use settings and commands to tune the results closer to the style you want.

1. Logging in to Midjourney and Preparing Your Account

After opening the Midjourney website, you typically need to authorize login with a Discord account, which is one of Midjourney’s main entry points. It’s recommended to first set up your nickname, avatar, and commonly used device login in Discord to avoid repeated verification later. If you plan to use Midjourney long term, it’s best to stick to one frequently used computer or phone to reduce the chance of triggering risk controls.

2. Create Your Own Channel and Add the Midjourney Bot

Create your own server in Discord (or create a new channel in an existing server) dedicated to running Midjourney so your generation records stay cleaner. After adding the Midjourney Bot to the server, make sure it retains permission to send messages/use slash commands; otherwise, commands may fail to send or receive no response. It’s recommended to create a separate “mj-generation” channel to prevent chat messages from pushing your generation info out of view.

3. Use /imagine to Generate Your First Image (Including the Most Common Parameters)

Type “/imagine” in the channel, write your prompt in the prompt field, and submit; Midjourney will return a 2×2 grid of results. If you want it to match a certain composition more closely, you can add “--ar 16:9 / --ar 1:1” to control the aspect ratio; if you want more detail, you can moderately increase stylization or refine the description. When using Midjourney for the first time, a clear subject + setting + lighting + lens (e.g., “person, indoors, soft light, 50mm”) is more reliable than piling on lots of adjectives.

4. Upscaling, Fine-tuning, and Managing Your Work (Avoid Common Pitfalls)

After generation, click U (Upscale) to enlarge, and V (Variations) to create similar variants—this is Midjourney’s most common iteration workflow. If you find Midjourney’s style “drifting,” first remove keywords that conflict with each other, and add negative descriptions in the prompt for what you don’t want (e.g., no text, no watermark). If you lose your work, don’t panic—go to the gallery/history on the Midjourney website to retrieve it; it’s usually faster than scrolling through channel logs.