Feb 9: Superb Owl Sunday

A wide variety of owls for your viewing pleasure

I first began making “superb owls” a couple of years ago. At the time, owls were among the relatively few subjects that Midjourney was able to create in a convincing manner.

I made way too many owls back then and didn’t return to that particular obsession until recently. But what with the Super Bowl — or should I say Superb Owl? — coming up, and much better tools in Midjourney, I’ve found myself creating owl after owl once again.

Meanwhile, I also began playing around with another AI image generator, NightCafe Studio, about a month ago. I haven’t wanted to pay for it since I’m already shelling out a fair amount for Midjourney, so I’ve been creating images at NightCafe using only their free tools — which are rather limited.

Although I haven’t been thrilled with much of what I’ve created with NightCafe, the process of using it is certainly expanding my AI horizons. For example, I plugged a Midjourney-created prompt describing the image above into NightCafe. In response, NightCafe created much of the image you see below.

There were originally several issues with it, the worst of which was a third wing sticking directly out of the owl’s shoulder. I pulled up the NightCafe image in Midjourney’s editor and asked it to get rid of the extra wing. Next I asked it to add canvas to the top and the bottom of the image, which had originally been square. I liked the resulting image (above) and was impressed that Midjourney had been able to mimic NightCafe’s style so seamlessly.

It seems Midjourney is now able to create images using many more styles than it could two years ago.

Of course the same could be said for me as well. AI image generation continues to be a most interesting (mid)journey.

Best wishes to all of you who are watching the Super Bowl today — I hope your team wins. And if you have other activities lined up instead, I wish you an equally happy and fun day.