Lighting Prompts for Midjourney

Why do Lighting Keywords Work in Midjourney?

Lighting keywords are great for generating photography images in Midjourney! They give the AI information on the mood you are looking for, they affect the color of the image, and tell the AI that the photo should look professional.

Some of these Lighting keywords can work for illustrations as well, but they were particularly selected to help you generate better photorealistic images.

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Use the buttons below to quickly jump through the prompt examples.

Soft Lighting

Soft lighting is used to create photos with even, diffused light.

Similar to natural lighting, Midjourney tends to use organic and earthy colors in these photos to subtly reinforce the softness of the photo.

Backlighting

As the name suggests, this keyword places the light source behind the subject. It creates dark, moody images with harsh shadow lines.

Images that use the backlighting keyword tend to have a dark background, and the subject is often blended into the background.

If you are lucky, you can generate an image with a rim lighting halo that outlines your subject (like is seen in the woman’s portrait). I took a while to get this, and you may require a more specific prompt to generate images like these more often.

Natural Lighting

Naturally lit photos have warm and even lighting across the image as if the image was taken outside in the sun.

This lighting makes the photos appear inviting and organic. Even the color palettes tend to look similar to those you can find in nature.

Golden Hour

The Golden Hour is a photography term used to describe a particular time in the day when the sun is setting, and the world is bathed in golden light.

You can capture some breathtaking images during this time!

Midjourney will almost always add a setting sun to your composition, and the gold wash will overwrite any other color prompt you add.

Sunset

Your subjects are usually backlit by a beautiful and colorful sky when you use “sunset” in your prompt.

Unlike Golden Hour, Sunset is not locked down to one type of color palette. This is a great keyword if you’d like a sunset sky and sun flares in your image, but don’t want to be locked down by a golden composition.

Shadowed

This keyword generates images with fascinating shadows and patterns on your subject’s face.

It’s a great prompt to use when you are looking to generate dramatic and artistic photos.

Sunflare

This keyword is pretty self-explanatory: it adds sunflares to images!

It often has a similar golden glow to the Golden Hour prompt, but this is more easily overwritten.

Studio Lighting

If you’re ever struggling to make an image look like it was taken by a professional photographer, add “studio lighting” to the end of your prompt. It almost always fixes the problem.

You don’t often hear about a photo with studio lighting being taken by an armature. Only a professional photographer would have access to such lighting equipment.

Outside of professionalism, studio lighting photos also tend to be taken on a dark background and use shadows more dramatically. Kind of a more dramatic school photo!

Want More Photography Prompt Inspiration for Midjourney?

Check out some of my other keyword inspiration lists. All prompts are tried and tested in Midjourney.