People Are Using Camera Filenames to Make Midjourney More Photorealistic

Midjourney released its latest V7 model last week and already users have been inputting creative prompts that include a filename from a camera system to achieve photorealistic AI images.

One X user, who goes by Min Choi, published a thread of images in which he writes a generic camera filename before a descriptive prompt. Choi chose CR2, Canon’s previous generation RAW image file format. For example, Choi used the prompt “IMG_7249.CR2” followed by “casual selfie at X.”

The results are astonishing, producing images that are almost impossible to detect as synthetic.

It’s not just Canon filenames either, Levi Forster used the iPhone image format HEIC, in his Midjourney prompt.

“AI is trained on photos,” Forster explains. “Many real photos have file names like IMG_02202021.HEIC — so if you feed it just a typical file name in the prompt and that’s it, it will generate a realistic looking picture because the data that corresponds is always real.”

A Reddit user has been trying out this method for the last few months in a bid to create realistic looking photos on the AI image generator.

“CR2 file is a RAW image file format created by Canon digital cameras,” the Reddit user explains. “The name CR2 stands for Canon Raw 2. The number part I’ve just made up so you can mess around with the numbers but just make sure it’s in that order.”

Users can simply enter a generic camera filename in the prompt, nothing else, and Midjourney will come back with “something random.”

Meanwhile, other users have praised the new model’s “base level realism”, showing off photorealistic examples.

Midjourney’s V7 model is currently in its alpha phase and is still rolling out all of its features. It has a new “Draft Mode” which is reportedly 10 times the speed and costs less. The catch is that it generates images in lower-resolution.