Images are essential in every piece of work, from creative art, branding, and storytelling to blogging.
But finding images that match your needs can be difficult. Sure, you could use stock images, but they may not look realistic and can’t fit every purpose. Besides, most require attribution.
That’s where artificial intelligence text-to-image tools like BlueWillow and Midjourney come in.
Picture a world where computers can produce hyperrealistic images like those seen with your own eyes. Initially, this concept was futuristic, but it’s now here with us.
You can generate an image for any situation by providing a descriptive text prompt. With tools like BlueWillow and Midjourney, you can produce images for fantasy creatures, coloring books, holiday themes, storybooks, and more.
In this article, we will put BlueWillow vs Midjourney side by side. We will compare them on various parameters which will help you pick the better tool for your requirements.
Let’s jump in.
What is BlueWillow?
BlueWillow is a text-to-image artificial intelligence tool that generates images based on the text prompt you provide.
It uses various AI models, such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, Parti, and Google Imagen. It selects a model suitable for creating the ideal image for the user. The model selected depends on your prompt, image style, and image size.
BlueWillow was founded in January 2023 by a team of AI engineers with over ten years of experience in the AI space in different industries, including healthcare, astronomy, and crypto.
How Does It Work?
To use this tool, visit the website, sign up, and type a text prompt in the prompt box. You can also type prompts in their Discord server.
Free image generations can only be viewed via the LimeWire AI Studio on the website. On the other hand, premium subscribers can generate the images on Discord and view them there.
Free users can still type prompts in Discord but must click on the AI Studio link to view them.
Initially, BlueWillow was completely free, but paid plans were introduced after LimeWire acquired the company in September 2023.
You can use BlueWillow to generate images for logos, digital artwork, characters, illustrations, photos, designs, and concept art.
While BlueWillow is still in beta (under development), millions have already used the tool to create stunning images for different purposes, including business presentations, social media posts, and personal projects.
I joined their Discord server and checked the announcement channel, which stated they are working on adding more features, such as an AI music generation, v5 upgrade, and engagement features like prompt challenges and comments.
What Is Midjourney?
Midjourney is an independent research company that created an AI tool also known as Midjourney. This tool generates creative and stunning images from text prompts.
Midjourney taps into a neural network to learn how images and text connect. Simply put, it’s trained to understand a vast database of text and images; it uses the knowledge to provide new images after you enter a text prompt.
How Does Midjourney Work?
To use Midjourney, sign up on the website, subscribe to a plan, and log in to be directed to Discord. Once here, join one of the newcomer’s channels and enter a text prompt starting with /imagine.
You will wait a few seconds for Midjourney to generate four images that match your prompt. If you like an image, you can upscale and download it. Otherwise, you can generate the images until you find what pleases you.
Provide a detailed yet specific prompt to find an accurate image for your needs. Midjourney is still improving, but many people are using it, including graphic designers, digital product sellers, social media marketers, researchers, and more.
Access Medium
BlueWillow
You can access and use BlueWillow on their website. Click ‘try now for free’ on the upper right.
A page will open with a prompt box on the left. Type in the prompt and choose the number of images to generate.
Please note generating images from the website is free.
You can also access BlueWillow on Discord, type a relevant text prompt, and enter. This method requires a paid plan and will display your images directly in a Discord channel.
Midjourney
To use Midjourney, you must join their Discord server and subscribe to a suitable plan.
Next, open any #newbies public channel, enter your text prompt, and generate images.
Verdict
Whether you are using Midjourney or BlueWillow, Discord access is required to generate desired images. However, BlueWillow also allows you to use its website to create images.
Image Styles
BlueWillow
BlueWillow can turn text prompts into various images with photorealistic, anime, artistic, cartoon, and game styles.
The photorealistic images resemble real-world images and are suitable for commercial use. If you want to create artwork for different creative projects, you can use BlueWillow to generate artistic images.
BlueWillow’s anime-style images have bright colors, dynamic compositions, and exaggerated features. You can use them to build animations, video games, and Japanese-inspired works.
The platform’s game-style images feature detailed models, realistic textures, and dynamic lighting. You can use these images to develop artwork for game-related tasks.
Lastly, BlueWillow’s cartoon-style images are characterized by bold colors, simplified shapes, and other exaggerated features.
You will find these images useful if you’re working on animations, children’s books, and other cartoon-based projects.
BlueWillow’s images are less detailed and not very realistic. They also have a narrower style range and aren’t consistent.
BlueWillow excels in generating images for sci-fi scenes and landscapes.
Midjourney
Midjourney generates highly realistic and detailed images because it uses a bigger and more complex image dataset to train the AI model.
Midjourney excels at producing images in various styles, such as artistic, photorealistic, and abstract. The photorealistic images look very similar to real-world images. You can use these images for commercial purposes, such as product marketing.
Artistic image styles include drawing, painting, and illustration. Artistic images are essential for social media, websites, and other creative tasks.
The abstract images don’t represent a real-world scene or object. You can use them to create unique and eye-grabbing artwork.
Besides, Midjourney lets you generate images that match the style of art movements like Vorticism, Minimalism, or Surrealism. It can also create images that match the style of famous artists like Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo, Andy Warhol, Frida Kahlo, and more.
Midjourney’s images show more consistency in style and detail.
Verdict
Midjourney’s images have better quality, are highly realistic, have a wider style range and higher detail, and are more consistent than BlueWillow’s.
Ease of Use
BlueWillow
On the Website
BlueWillow’s interface is simple, whether on the website or Discord. Go to the AI Studio section on the website and select what you want the tool to do in a dropdown menu. The options include Create Image, Edit Image, Upscale Image, and Outpaint Image.
Next is the prompt text box, where you can type a sentence of the type of image you have in mind. Below it, you will see a negative prompt box where you can include words that the image shouldn’t contain.
On the right, you can select the preferred image dimensions, which include squared (1024 x 1024), portrait (1024 x 1536), or landscape (1536 x 1024).
Below the dimensions, there is prompt guidance – a scale between 1.5 and 15. Higher values on this scale indicate the closeness of your image to the prompt.
You can also select the image quality from low, medium, or high on the website. Plus, you can select the number of images you want to generate, between 1 and 4.
Discord
BlueWillow’s Discord server has ‘rookie’ channels where new subscribers go and enter a prompt. The tool takes a few seconds to generate four images that match the prompt.
You can see the images under the ‘mention’ section or in your feed. If you like an image, you can upscale it. If not, you can click on V1, V2, V3, or V4 to get more image variations.
To save the image, right-click and select save as. You can also open it in the browser and save it on your device.
Midjourney
Although Midjourney is still in beta, it has an easy-to-use interface. Once you join the Discord server and purchase a subscription, you can select one of their ‘newbie’ channels, type a text prompt starting with /imagine, and generate your images.
Midjourney takes seconds to generate four image variations for you labeled U1, U2, U3, and U4. The U stands for Upscale. So, if you are satisfied with the first image, for example, click on U1 to upscale it.
However, if you like an image but want more variations of the same, you can use the V1, V2, V3, and V4 options. Clicking on V1, for example, generates four other variations for the first image.
After upscaling, you can right-click on the image and click ‘save as’ to download it. You can also open it in a browser if you want.
Midjourney also offers features that allow for customization and refinement of results. For instance, to select an image aspect ratio, type two hyphens followed by the ratio, such as –3:2, at the end of a prompt.
Similarly, if you want the image to bear a specific style, use the – style at the end of the prompt.
Verdict
Both Midjourney and BlueWillow are intuitive platforms with a user-friendly interface.
Also Read: Can You Use Canva Images For Commercial Use?
Privacy
BlueWillow
If you don’t want everyone to see your images, you can create your own server and invite a few friends or colleagues to access it.
Next, go to any rookie channel and click on the BlueWillow bot, then add it to your server. After that, you can start messaging the chatbot with prompts to generate images.
The bot will generate images matching your prompt, and you can select the images you like. If you want to generate images that only you can access from your server, use private messages to send a text prompt to the bot.
Midjourney
While Midjourney has public ‘newbie’ channels where you can generate images for all to see, the platform also lets you create images and access them privately.
To generate images privately, create your own server and add the Midjourney bot to it. That way, you can generate images that no one else can view.
Read this tutorial to understand how to add the Midjourney bot to your own server.
Verdict
Both platforms support the private creation of images.
Copyright Ownership and Commercial Use
BlueWillow
BlueWillow’s FAQ page states that you own the rights to any image the tool generates. Additionally, you can use these images in your personal art projects or for commercial purposes.
But that’s not all.
Read the fine print from the Terms of Service page to understand better.
Free Users
If you use BlueWillow’s free version, your images will be published on public channels.
That means other users can view and use your images. You can also view and use the assets that other users create.
That said, by using BlueWillow’s free version, you grant the company and its successors a royalty-free, non-exclusive, and worldwide license to modify. You also allow to publicly display, sublicense, and even distribute, for any use, your image and text prompts and the assets generated from these prompts.
Paid Users
As a paid user, BlueWillow lets you access the private mode to connect their bot to your server and generate assets privately.
These assets aren’t publicly accessible or shared unless you allow it. BlueWillow will take commercial actions to ensure any assets produced on a private server or channel aren’t publicly accessible on the platform.
Being a paid subscriber, you own the assets generated. BlueWillow has no licenses or rights to use those assets.
Here’s the regulation that applies to both free and paid users:
Both free and paid users must not use BlueWillow-generated assets for illegal purposes, such as offensive, abusive, or aggressive uses.
Images should not promote harassment, distress, or violence. They should also not contain any gore or adult content.
Midjourney
According to Midjourney’s Terms of Service, using their services means you are giving the company and any successor the right to share, use, or distribute the images and prompts you add to the platform.
Subject to the aforementioned license, you own any asset generated by Midjourney as long as you created it according to the company’s terms.
These ownership rights exclude upscaling other users’ images, as those images are the property of their original creators.
If you create any assets on Midjourney, you own them even after downgrading or canceling your membership.
However, to own assets created, users who own or work at a company with gross revenue of at least $1,000,000 per year and use the AI tool on behalf of their employer must buy the Mega or Pro membership for each person using the services.
If you post your prompts and generate images on public channels, Midjourney allows users to remix and use those assets. But this doesn’t happen if you generate the images privately.
Verdict
Both Midjourney and BlueWillow give users ownership rights on assets generated using their services. They also have similar terms for using assets generated via public channels.
Pricing
BlueWillow
BlueWillow has a free plan and three paid plans. The free plan has only 10 credits and lets you enter a prompt and generate an image from their website.
The most affordable paid plan is Willower at $5 per month. It has 50 prompts per day and lets you access five concurrent images.
The next plan is Blue Angel, with 100 daily prompts and ten concurrent images. This plan gives you access to private DM image generation, among other superior features. It costs $10 per month.
The Sapphire plan costs $20 monthly, lets you generate images privately, has 200 daily prompts, and can produce 10 concurrent images.
To subscribe, type the command /subscribe in any BlueWillow public channel and enter. The three plans will appear with a link on each.
Click on the desired plan’s link to be directed to the checkout page on the website so you can pay with a card or Google Pay.
Midjourney
You won’t find a free plan here. There are four premium plans: Basic, Standard, Pro, and Mega, costing $10, $30, $60, and $120 respectively.
The most expensive plans have more GPU time. However, you can buy more GPU time for each plan at $4 per hour.
The stealth mode is only available on the Pro and Mega plans. It lets you generate images privately from the Midjourney bot, hiding them from any public channel.
To subscribe, go to any #newbies channel, type the /subscribe command, and hit enter. You will see a personal link that redirects to the website’s subscription plans page.
Toggle to choose a monthly or annual payment, select a suitable plan, and proceed to checkout.
Verdict
BlueWillow has a free plan and three premium but affordable plans. On the other hand, Midjourney has only four paid plans that are more expensive than BlueWillow’s.
Customer Support
BlueWillow
BlueWillow provides help to customers with questions related to using the text-to-image generation tool.
The #get-help channel is open to both free and premium members to ask questions and get responses like live chat on a website.
The #ama or ask me anything channel feature is where users ask all kinds of questions related to BlueWillow’s features. BlueWillow moderators respond.
Midjourney
Midjourney offers support to users directly via Discord. If you encounter any issues with the Midjourney bot, server, or billing, you can visit the #member-support channel for assistance.
You can also find quick answers to common questions by typing /ask in support channels.
Besides, Midjourney has social media pages on LinkedIn and Twitter where you can contact their customer support via comments or direct messages.
If you have questions about billing, check out their help articles on this page for answers.
Moreover, there’s a documentation page on the website with relevant information, such as how to get started and how to write prompts on Discord.
Discord’s #prompt-faqs channel has highly detailed articles and tutorials on parameters, prompting, puppeteering, creating blank backgrounds, troubleshooting issues, etc.
Community Help
BlueWillow
BlueWillow has an active community of over 2.3 million members on its Discord server. The community uses a forum and live chat style to communicate.
Various public channels keep the members active; these include:
- General – Users post and reply to comment on general subjects
- Prompt discussion – Users share questions on modifying prompts to generate the desired images.
- Prompting – People post various prompts, seeking feedback or opinions from other users
- Meme – The channel contains hilarious memes and replies on AI, tech, and life.
Midjourney
Midjourney’s Discord server has an active community that lets users ask questions, share images, and get assistance from the Midjourney team and other users.
Members are urged to adhere to the community guidelines while interacting on the platform.
Here are some of the most active community channels:
- Discussion – Members ask general questions regarding Discord, billing, Midjourney, and more.
- Prompt chat – Members compare image results for similar prompts, seek suggestions on improving prompts, and ask questions regarding specific prompts.
Verdict
Whether using BlueWillow or Midjourney, customers can find answers to most questions by checking on various Discord channels. However, Midjourney has more resources to address the customers’ requests than BlueWillow.
BlueWillow vs Midjourney: Similarities and Differences
Similarities
- Both are accessible on Discord
- Both give users ownership rights of the assets generated
- Both let you generate more variations of an image
- Both support private image generation
- Both are easy to use
- Both have an active community on Discord
- Both support the commercial use of assets
- Both allow other creators to access and use images accessible on public channels
- Both can generate images in varied styles
- Both are accessible to a wide variety of users, from hobbyists to designers and artists
Differences
- Midjourney produces images with more detail and style than BlueWillow
- BlueWillow is accessible from the website and Discord, but Midjourney is only accessible from Discord
- BlueWillow has a free plan, while Midjourney doesn’t
Conclusion
The BlueWillow vs Midjourney competition is a tough one. They have plenty of similarities and fewer differences.
If I had to make a choice, I would stick with Midjourney. The image generation speed is quicker and the overall quality of upscaled images is more realistic than BlueWillow. Plus, there’s consistency in style and quality.
