10 Best Midjourney Prompts for Amazing Portraits

The latest version Midjourney v6 is creating incredible images. If you want to create realistic and high-quality portrait photos, it’s now easier than ever as Midjourney now understands natural language extremely well. This allows you to prompt with simple text and generate stunning portrait images.

I have experimented with Midjourney and found some great prompts that produce amazing portrait photos with just a few words. The AI understands details like age, gender, emotions, lighting, and more to generate portraits that look like real photographs.

In this post, I will share 10 of the best Midjourney version 6 prompts I have found for creating a variety of portrait photos, from headshots to cinematic styles. These prompts are short but contain enough details and context for Midjourney to render incredibly life-like and artistic portraits. Whether you want traditional or more stylized portraits, these prompts will allow you to easily create beautiful portrait images.

MIdjourney Prompts for Portraits

Following are some of the best Midjourney prompts to create portrait photos.

Realistic portrait of a young woman

This prompt generates a realistic, vivid and artistic portrait of a young woman. Midjourney renders her with lots of detail, from the textures and colors of her hair, skin, and clothing to subtle lighting and depth of field effects that make the portrait look photographic.

The AI understands the request for a young woman specifically and renders her age appropriately with youthful facial features. The realism style creates an authentic, naturally lit, and high resolution portrait. This prompt is great for getting a realistic headshot or close-up of a young female model or character.

Cinematic portrait of an actress

This prompt creates a dramatic, cinematic-style portrait like those seen in movie posters or advertisements. Midjourney adds moody lighting, and shallow depth of field to make the portrait look like a professional production still.

The word “actress” tells the AI to render a female face with strong, striking features suitable for the big screen. This prompt is perfect for generating an idealized but realistic portrait of a lead actress.

Monochromatic portrait of a smiling old man

With this prompt, Midjourney produces a black and white portrait of an elderly man with a warm, friendly smile. The AI adds grain, texture, and uses high contrast lighting to give the monochromatic portrait an artistic, classic look.

Specifying “old man” and “smiling” instructs Midjourney to render weathered facial features full of character along with a genuine, joyful expression. The black and white style creates a timeless, meaningful portrait.

Close up portrait of a sad woman in 40s

This prompt generates an intimate close-up of a woman’s face looking sad and contemplative. Midjourney depicts her in her late 40s with subtle signs of mature age like fine lines and without makeup.

The lighting is soft and the depth of field shallow for a filmic look. Specifying she is sad results in a somber expression and emotion in her eyes. This prompt allows you to create a thoughtful character portrait and have the AI reflect inner emotions.

Head shot of a male model in professional dress

Here Midjourney creates a classic head shot suited for a model portfolio or corporate brochure. The prompt calls for a male model in sharp professional dress, so the AI generates a handsome man in a well-fitted suit and tie.

The lighting is even and flattering, helping make the model look polished and put-together. This prompt lets you easily generate a commercial style, clean-cut portrait of a male professional.

Glamorous portrait of a female model

This prompt yields a highly stylized, elegant portrait of a female model. Midjourney combines beauty retouching, dramatic lighting, and bold makeup to create an idealized, magazine cover-worthy shot.

The AI focuses on enhancing the model’s beauty, allure, and femininity to match the request for a glamorous look. This is a great prompt for fashion advertising or fantastical portraits of striking characters.

Candid portrait of an old woman

This prompt creates a candid, unposed portrait of an elderly woman. The lighting is natural and unfiltered, showing the texture of her skin and wispy hair. Her expression is subtle and reflective as she’s captured in a quiet, pensive moment.

Midjourney uses softer focus, less contrast, and warm tones to portray the subject as aged but beautiful in her own way. Specifying a candid style results in a raw, genuine portrait.

Softly lit portrait of a handsome man

This prompt generates a flattering portrait of an attractive man lit with soft, even lighting. The depth of field is shallow, drawing attention to his strong facial features and direct gaze.

Midjourney depicts heightens his rugged handsomeness by enhancing his chiseled jawline, intense eyes, and tousled hair. The softened lighting creates an intimate yet masculine portrait.

High resolution portrait of a gorgeous woman

This prompt creates a crisp, detailed portrait by rendering the image in high resolution. Midjourney generates a strikingly beautiful woman, from the clear, flawless skin to individual strands of flowing hair.

The lighting and composition are designed to beautify and showcase her most alluring features. This prompt allows you to create an intricate, high-definition portrait to appreciate the AI’s detail.

Highly detailed portrait of a middle aged woman

This prompt yields an ultra-realistic, close-up portrait of a woman in her middle age. Midjourney picks up on small details like wrinkles, pores, and fine lines around the eyes and mouth to depict subtle signs of mature age.

The depth of field is very shallow to reveal every pore and facial hair. The woman’s expression seems like sadness. This prompt really shows the AI’s capacity for generating highly detailed and accurate portraits.

As you can see, Midjourney is capable of generating incredibly realistic and detailed portrait photos from simple textual prompts. Specifying gender, age, emotion, lighting, and artistic style is enough for Midjourney to render beautiful, unique portraits.

The AI’s advanced image generation capabilities allow it to portray subtle qualities like skin texture, hair, clothing materials, depth of field, and lighting effects that make the portraits look like real photographs.

These prompts just scratch the surface of what’s possible. I encourage you to experiment with your own wording to create custom portraits for your needs. Adjust the age, facial expression, pose, lighting, and art style to watch Midjourney turn your words into photographic art. With the right prompts, anyone can easily generate professional-grade portrait images.