I'm currently browsing on Midjourney's Discrod Channel to find some interesting prompts, which I would use as basis and modify on my own.
Found several persons using the describe function with some Adobe Stock thumbnails to generate prompts.
Lol, people are just copycats.

Is someone here using this function too?

Tried it with my own files to check how my images are described and what those prompts then create. Thankfully the resulting files were very different. Same genre but not copies.

I also test my image descriptions and titles to see if they create duplicates then modify my titles to be more generic if the results are too close.

I keep browsing their public explore gallery for interesting prompts, then modify them for my own purposes. I never go for copies, I always want the style and vibe for something very different, often a different genre altogether.

But there is a lot to learn about lighting, mood, composition directions. The more specific, the better the results. My descriptions are becoming longer and longer.

eta

now dropped to 5180

that is a low I have not seen in a very long time

Yeah, it's really interesting to browse on the Discord Channel. I love it. Really great to learn and get inspiration.
What kinda brutal is, how many user are now generating banners for youtube, linkedin, social media, etc.
And the most brutal is, how often Midjourney is generating really good stuff, which looks like it is photoshopped.

What I didn't know about Midjourney is, that you can "transfer" image effects of generated images to another.
Some users are creating complex effects, which normally are created with Photoshop's layer blending options.

I believe normal, boring stock photos / images will drop a lot in sales in the future. One have to create unique creative stuff.

Quote from: cobalt on April 07, 2024, 20:39

Tried it with my own files to check how my images are described and what those prompts then create. Thankfully the resulting files were very different. Same genre but not copies.

I also test my image descriptions and titles to see if they create duplicates then modify my titles to be more generic if the results are too close.

I keep browsing their public explore gallery for interesting prompts, then modify them for my own purposes. I never go for copies, I always want the style and vibe for something very different, often a different genre altogether.

But there is a lot to learn about lighting, mood, composition directions. The more specific, the better the results. My descriptions are becoming longer and longer.

eta

now dropped to 5180

that is a low I have not seen in a very long time

Yeah, it's really interesting to browse on the Discord Channel. I love it. Really great to learn and get inspiration.
What kinda brutal is, how many user are now generating banners for youtube, linkedin, social media, etc.
And the most brutal is, how often Midjourney is generating really good stuff, which looks like it is photoshopped.

What I didn't know about Midjourney is, that you can "transfer" image effects of generated images to another.
Some users are creating complex effects, which normally are created with Photoshop's layer blending options.

I believe normal, boring stock photos / images will drop a lot in sales in the future. One have to create unique creative stuff.

And that's why companies like Midjourney, ChatGPT, etc - should be accountable/comepensate the users they stole their materials from, on a perpetual, recurring basis - the same income they expect to get from having stolen it from other people... the "man in the middle" thing (i.e., they got the images from a "research" company, aka "stealing") is total b.s. designed to try and it make it appear they didn't steal stuff, when in fact, they did, and they do. Their business is based off of theft.

But it's exciting and depressing at the same time what users can create.
I'm happy I'm not working in the design industry, would be extremely upset seeing what nowday's people can create without any digital image processing skills.
If development continues at this rate hardly anyone will use Photoshop in 10 years.

I know someone who is a former, successful, graphic artist and she says, the business was ruined when they came out with Adobe Illustrator and people don't have to be artists anymore, they can do everything on a computer.  I wanted to say, join in and learn Adobe Illustrator? She's still got the skills, talent, experience and brain.

If I see her this Summer I'll ask what she thinks of AI? Now people don't need to be much of any kind of artist, they just type in a prompt and have an illustration. Or don't like that? Alter the prompt, styles, lab settings, and make four more new "original" images.

by sharing rank changes we get an even better feeling for - is it me - or is it everyone?

and in my case i think it is motivating that it is possible to move up very swiftly if you have in demand content.

there is always the rumor that agencies somehow "lock you" into a rank and that you can never earn more than some imaginary limit.

my very wild swings show this is not true at all.

i must do even better research, find some more niches and targeted content and then i am sure i can reach my financial goals even faster.

Quote from: Andrej.S. on April 08, 2024, 08:50

But it's exciting and depressing at the same time what users can create.
I'm happy I'm not working in the design industry, would be extremely upset seeing what nowday's people can create without any digital image processing skills.
If development continues at this rate hardly anyone will use Photoshop in 10 years.

I know someone who is a former, successful, graphic artist and she says, the business was ruined when they came out with Adobe Illustrator and people don't have to be artists anymore, they can do everything on a computer.  I wanted to say, join in and learn Adobe Illustrator? She's still got the skills, talent, experience and brain.

If I see her this Summer I'll ask what she thinks of AI? Now people don't need to be much of any kind of artist, they just type in a prompt and have an illustration. Or don't like that? Alter the prompt, styles, lab settings, and make four more new "original" images.

Well, yeah if you go further back than the real artists, wo had real skills with pencil sketching, oil paintings, aquarell papers and colors, etc. had been really screwed up hard when Photoshop and Illustrator were published.
It was the digital nomad time when digital artists created stuff like logos and webdesigns in Illustrator.
You could get nice earnings with logo designing back then, e.g. about 200 to 300 bucks for one single corporate logo in ai / eps format.
Nowdays it is the time of digital theft. By looking at the discord channel I even believe that Midjourney generates masses of movie and series stills. If you use promptings like "cinematic still, cinematic vibe", etc. the images look really like from a movie or tv series.
I don't believe that the AI is in the current state so "clever" to apply image effects. There must be tons of material of movies that Midjourney uses for image generation.

@Back to topic:
My worst week since months sofar. No single sale.

Quote from: Andrej.S. on April 08, 2024, 16:12

Quote from: Uncle Pete on April 08, 2024, 11:13

Quote from: Andrej.S. on April 08, 2024, 08:50

But it's exciting and depressing at the same time what users can create.
I'm happy I'm not working in the design industry, would be extremely upset seeing what nowday's people can create without any digital image processing skills.
If development continues at this rate hardly anyone will use Photoshop in 10 years.

I know someone who is a former, successful, graphic artist and she says, the business was ruined when they came out with Adobe Illustrator and people don't have to be artists anymore, they can do everything on a computer.  I wanted to say, join in and learn Adobe Illustrator? She's still got the skills, talent, experience and brain.

If I see her this Summer I'll ask what she thinks of AI? Now people don't need to be much of any kind of artist, they just type in a prompt and have an illustration. Or don't like that? Alter the prompt, styles, lab settings, and make four more new "original" images.

Well, yeah if you go further back than the real artists, wo had real skills with pencil sketching, oil paintings, aquarell papers and colors, etc. had been really screwed up hard when Photoshop and Illustrator were published.
It was the digital nomad time when digital artists created stuff like logos and webdesigns in Illustrator.
You could get nice earnings with logo designing back then, e.g. about 200 to 300 bucks for one single corporate logo in ai / eps format.
Nowdays it is the time of digital theft. By looking at the discord channel I even believe that Midjourney generates masses of movie and series stills. If you use promptings like "cinematic still, cinematic vibe", etc. the images look really like from a movie or tv series.
I don't believe that the AI is in the current state so "clever" to apply image effects. There must be tons of material of movies that Midjourney uses for image generation.

@Back to topic:
My worst week since months sofar. No single sale.

May I ask where you come from or where you live?

Nobody here in Germany can live on 200 to 300 dollars for a corporate logo, let alone feed a family. The cost of living is simply too high for that.

I'm living in Germany. Years ago you could live even as a design freelancer quite well in Germany. You would not sell just a single logo a month, Rather at least 10 and design websites in parallel.
If you're skilled this was easily possible.
I sold back then some but not as a pro. But there were some really experienced pros 10 years ago, who could live of it.

For example 99designs was a famous design plattform for freelancers.

Today I can't imagine there are many buyers. Instead the majority will use Midjourney.
There are tons of users generating logos, icons and web layouts.

by sharing rank changes we get an even better feeling for - is it me - or is it everyone?

and in my case i think it is motivating that it is possible to move up very swiftly if you have in demand content.

there is always the rumor that agencies somehow "lock you" into a rank and that you can never earn more than some imaginary limit.

my very wild swings show this is not true at all.

i must do even better research, find some more niches and targeted content and then i am sure i can reach my financial goals even faster.

Yes, it's entertaining, and the last part BOLD is what's more important.

The imaginary limits and locks are just people who are unhappy or losing sales and make up reasons to justify or rationalize. No proof needed to post on a forum how the agency is favoring someone else. It's always, someone else gets better placement, some favorite person has unfair higher rank and makes more, because of something the agency does. It's not because those people have better images, newer images, more images, the trending images, or like you do, the successful people search for needs of customers.

"by sharing rank changes we get an even better feeling for - is it me - or is it everyone?"
The number of people who participate is so small, the sample is not enough for any valid conclusions. If it's "me or everyone" then your rank will be the same if you sell 100 images and everyone sells 100 images, as if you sell 50 images and everyone sells 50 images. Your rank, can stay the same number, if you and everyone else, sell more or sell less, because it's just a rank, by position.

One week, you're on top, because you have a great week, the next, you feel like you're down, because either you went flat, or someone else had a good high sales week. The rank can be like the tide.

I admit my rank is a joke and irrelevant. If I go up or down 5,500 places that's nowhere near if you go up or down 100 places. I'm at 28,000 right now. Everyone in the world, with the same number of sales, is at 28,000. If you have 100 sales so far this week, everyone with 100 sales, is identical to you, and everyone with 99 sales, which could be any number of people, will be the next rank down. If you are 4,000 and 100 people have 100 sales, the person with 99 and everyone else with 99 will be 3,900 rank.

I think you can see how a small number of sales, even one, can make a big change in the individual rank we can see. But really, it's a cluster. Every single image you sell, makes a move in your rank. Potentially a large move for two or three sales. So what does that really mean? It's almost like, how did the wind blow and hour ago?

I still say, watching a clock doesn't change the time. Watching your rank, while in general is interesting, it won't change your rank?  There's much more value in what you say:  find some more niches and targeted content and I'll add, watch trends, the news and the time of year.

Quote from: cobalt on April 08, 2024, 13:03

by sharing rank changes we get an even better feeling for - is it me - or is it everyone?

and in my case i think it is motivating that it is possible to move up very swiftly if you have in demand content.

there is always the rumor that agencies somehow "lock you" into a rank and that you can never earn more than some imaginary limit.

my very wild swings show this is not true at all.

i must do even better research, find some more niches and targeted content and then i am sure i can reach my financial goals even faster.

Yes, it's entertaining, and the last part BOLD is what's more important.

The imaginary limits and locks are just people who are unhappy or losing sales and make up reasons to justify or rationalize. No proof needed to post on a forum how the agency is favoring someone else. It's always, someone else gets better placement, some favorite person has unfair higher rank and makes more, because of something the agency does. It's not because those people have better images, newer images, more images, the trending images, or like you do, the successful people search for needs of customers.

"by sharing rank changes we get an even better feeling for - is it me - or is it everyone?"
The number of people who participate is so small, the sample is not enough for any valid conclusions. If it's "me or everyone" then your rank will be the same if you sell 100 images and everyone sells 100 images, as if you sell 50 images and everyone sells 50 images. Your rank, can stay the same number, if you and everyone else, sell more or sell less, because it's just a rank, by position.

One week, you're on top, because you have a great week, the next, you feel like you're down, because either you went flat, or someone else had a good high sales week. The rank can be like the tide.

I admit my rank is a joke and irrelevant. If I go up or down 5,500 places that's nowhere near if you go up or down 100 places. I'm at 28,000 right now. Everyone in the world, with the same number of sales, is at 28,000. If you have 100 sales so far this week, everyone with 100 sales, is identical to you, and everyone with 99 sales, which could be any number of people, will be the next rank down. If you are 4,000 and 100 people have 100 sales, the person with 99 and everyone else with 99 will be 3,900 rank.

I think you can see how a small number of sales, even one, can make a big change in the individual rank we can see. But really, it's a cluster. Every single image you sell, makes a move in your rank. Potentially a large move for two or three sales. So what does that really mean? It's almost like, how did the wind blow and hour ago?

I still say, watching a clock doesn't change the time. Watching your rank, while in general is interesting, it won't change your rank?  There's much more value in what you say:  find some more niches and targeted content and I'll add, watch trends, the news and the time of year.

Yes, I understand what you mean.
Some people try to use the ranking more as an indication of the overall current situation, to say which way the wind is blowing.
So when I see a low ranking, all I see is that the wind is not blowing in my direction.
But I still don't know which way the wind is blowing, i.e. which content is currently in demand.

It would actually be better if Adobe displayed the number of sales per image category.
Or at least not in absolute figures, but relative to the previous week/month, etc.

So we are still rowing in the fog ...

Hey Cobalt

Yes, the information that you can make it into the top 100 on your own is really good information.

Even if I will never make it there :-)
For me it bounces around between 2,700 and 3,500 and the display in the ranking seems to be delayed between 3 and 5 days.

So if we are comparing numbers it would be best to all post our data on Sunday evening for example, so we have a fixed point of comparison with which we could then calculate positions, fluctuations, variances and all that stuff.
That would probably bring us a little bit closer to the truth of the positioning

Have a sunny day@all,
Michael

Had a good sales day today after a very slow day yesterday.

We also learned that there are several single artists in the top 100. That is very valuable information.

I genuinely thought this was impossible, that you needed a huge production team and maybe at least 100k files to get there.

But some people are doing it with less than 10k files.

I don't need them to tell me what sells. I just need to know it is possible.

Yes the information is interesting but not very informative. We still don't know if it's a mix of niches, content quality or just beeing pushed by Adobe because of other aspects.

I haven't seen very successfull ports with less than 10k images in the featured best selling contributors, who are selling just usefull content. Most featured ports look very similar and most of the current AI ports are just a series of stolen prompt lists.

Jacob Lund and Gorodenkoff are featured almost every week with over 1 million downloads and approx. 40k ports.
But they offer as production teams more high end quality than just useful things.

So we still don't know what is selling really good, so that we can invest more time on creating this content.

I still believe that very efficient and profitable ports consist most of high quality banner graphics. Graphics are almost always outselling people images.
I will test it by buying the basic Midjourney Plan and then creating with Photoshop complex banners with the generated basis images.

I'm tired of wasting time with regular images. The competition is too high. If you have not an unique port so that Adobe will push you it's really waste of time.

PS: My week is extremly low with 3 downloads.

We also learned that there are several single artists in the top 100. That is very valuable information.

I genuinely thought this was impossible, that you needed a huge production team and maybe at least 100k files to get there.

But some people are doing it with less than 10k files.

I don't need them to tell me what sells. I just need to know it is possible.

How do you know that there are several single artists in the top 100? How do we see the ranks of other artists? (I think I forgot, if I knew that) Yes, true, it would take a large number of files and good ones.

Here's an idea or suggestion, if you want to track rank. Everyone who wants to post their rank, needs to look at the same time on the same day. Otherwise it's just numbers without meaning or context. If I look on Monday the rank is going to be different from Sunday. If I watched every day, all week, my rank will go up and down, based on whether I get DLs or someone else gets a streak. It can change by location and time of day.

Get a group and maybe anonymous would be good, to look at 2PM UTC on Sunday afternoon. Then post their rank and number of downloads for the database. Soon you will have a good idea of how many DLs make a general rank position. If the reasoning isn't clear, Sunday is the end of the week. The time is generally convenient for people in Europe and the America's. 2PM Greenwich is 8AM Central time USA.

Now that would be fun reading!

Example:

Predicted Lifetime Downloads / Position (using Old data 2019)

8,000/4,700
5,000/8,500
1,400/28,000
1,200/32,000
450    /67,000
200    /120,000

If someone had 8,000 downloads by the date these numbers were viewed, they would have ranked 4,700 on the lifetime downloads list at Adobe. Also there is a cut off for lifetime, maybe 200 or less DLs, as an example, where someone will not see a number, but instead ---