Midjourney Prompt Engineering Guide: Structure That Works
Midjourney rewards a different prompt structure than text models. Here is the layout I use for predictable, high-quality generations. Midjourney is the image generator I reach for most, and it has a distinct prompt language. Prompts that read well to a text model often produce muddy images in Midjourney because the model weights subject, style, and parameters differently. After a year of daily use, I have a prompt structure that produces predictable results and makes failures easier to diagnose. The Structure: Subject, Setting, Style, Parameters My Midjourney prompts follow four parts in order. The subject is what the image is about, stated first and as concretely as possible. The setting is where the subject exists, including time of day and atmosphere. The style is how the image should look, named as an art movement, medium, or reference artist rather than described with adjectives. The parameters are the Midjourney-specific flags like aspect ratio, stylize, and version, placed at the end. A real prompt I used last week: a single coffee cup on a wooden cafe table, morning light through a window, soft steam rising, muted warm palette, editorial food photography, shallow depth of field, --ar 3:2 --stylize 250 --v 6. The subject leads, the setting grounds it, the style tells the model how to render it, and the parameters control the output format. Reordering these parts changes the emphasis and often the result.