How to Use Midjourney Personalization Profiles

Midjourney personalization lets you train the system to understand your visual preferences. Instead of describing your style in every prompt, you build a profile that encodes your taste, then apply it with a simple parameter. The result is more consistent output that matches your aesthetic without lengthy style descriptions.

This guide covers how the personalization system works, how to use the --p parameter, building profiles with the Style Creator, using moodboards to refine your taste, and how V8.2 personalization differs from earlier versions.

What personalization does

Midjourney personalization analyzes your ranked image preferences and creates a profile that represents your aesthetic taste. When you apply this profile to a generation, the model biases its output toward colors, compositions, lighting, and styles that match your demonstrated preferences. Think of it as a persistent style filter that you have trained by choosing images you like.

The profile is not a style reference or an image prompt. It does not inject specific visual elements. Instead, it adjusts the probability space so that generated images are more likely to have qualities you have shown a preference for.

Using the --p parameter

The --p parameter applies your personalization profile to any generation. Add it to the end of your prompt like any other parameter.

a forest path in autumn, golden light filtering through trees --ar 3:2 --p

This generates the forest scene biased toward your personal style preferences. If your profile leans toward moody, desaturated imagery, the output will reflect that. If you prefer vibrant and saturated images, the same prompt will produce a different mood.

Using another user's profile

You can apply someone else's personalization profile by specifying their profile ID after the --p parameter. This is useful for collaborative work or when you want to generate in a shared team style.

a forest path in autumn, golden light filtering through trees --ar 3:2 --p your-profile-id

Replace your-profile-id with the actual alphanumeric profile code shared by the other user. Each user has a unique profile identifier that can be shared and used by others.

Combining --p with other parameters

Personalization stacks with other parameters. It does not override them but adds a preference layer on top of whatever else you specify.

a cyberpunk cityscape at night, neon reflections on wet streets --ar 21:9 --stylize 400 --p

Here --stylize 400 pushes the image toward a more artistic interpretation, and --p further biases it toward your personal taste within that artistic range. The parameters are additive, not competing.

Building your profile with Style Creator

Style Creator is the tool that trains your personalization profile. It shows you pairs or sets of images and asks you to choose which you prefer. Over many rounds of choices, it builds a statistical model of your aesthetic taste.

Accessing Style Creator

Access Style Creator through the Midjourney web interface. Navigate to your profile settings and find the personalization or Style Creator section. The tool presents you with image comparisons and asks you to pick the ones that appeal to you more.

How many choices you need

The more image pairs you rank, the more accurate your profile becomes. A minimum of 200 ranked pairs gives a functional baseline. For strong personalization, aim for 500 or more. The system continues learning as you rank more images over time.

Using --sref with Style Creator

The --sref parameter can be combined with Style Creator-trained profiles for even more specific results. While --p applies your general taste, --sref points to a specific reference image that further constrains the style.

a portrait in a garden, soft natural light --ar 4:5 --sref https://example.com/style-reference.jpg --p

This applies both your general personalization and a specific style reference. The model tries to satisfy both constraints, producing output that matches the reference style while also aligning with your broader preferences.

Moodboards for refined personalization

Moodboards in Midjourney let you collect generated images that represent a specific aesthetic direction. Unlike the broad Style Creator profile, moodboards can be used to create narrow, project-specific style profiles.

Creating a moodboard

Save images you generate (or like from the community) into a moodboard collection. Over time, this collection represents a specific visual direction: maybe dark and atmospheric for one project, bright and minimal for another. Each moodboard can inform the system about what you want for a particular body of work.

Using moodboards in generation

When generating with personalization, the system can reference your moodboard collections to further narrow its style interpretation. This is particularly useful when your general --p profile is broad but you want to generate for a specific project that has a tighter aesthetic.

• Build separate moodboards for different project types (editorial, product, concept art).
• Add at least 20-30 images to a moodboard before relying on it for consistent style guidance.
• Curate ruthlessly. One image that does not fit the aesthetic can pull results in unwanted directions.
• Update moodboards as your project direction evolves. They are living references, not fixed assets.

V8.2 personalization improvements

V8.2 introduces improvements to how personalization is applied during generation. The model is better at interpreting profile data and applying it in a way that feels natural rather than forced.

• More nuanced interpretation of color preferences. V8.2 does not simply shift hue; it understands palette relationships.
• Better handling of conflicting signals between prompt content and personalization preferences.
• Improved consistency across multiple generations with the same prompt and --p flag.
• Personalization effects scale more smoothly with --stylize values. Lower stylize plus --p gives subtle preference nudges; higher stylize plus --p gives stronger stylistic bias.

V8.2 personalization example

a still life arrangement of autumn vegetables on a wooden table, natural window light --ar 4:3 --v 8.2 --p

On V8.2, this generation will show stronger adherence to your profile preferences in terms of color temperature, contrast level, and compositional style compared to the same prompt on V8 or V6.1.

Strategies for effective personalization

• Be honest in Style Creator rankings. Pick what you genuinely prefer, not what you think is objectively better. The system needs your real taste to work.
• Rank across diverse subject matter. If you only rank landscapes, your profile will not know your preferences for portraits or abstract work.
• Test your profile periodically. Run the same prompt with and without --p to see how much influence it has. If the difference is minimal, you need more ranked pairs.
• Combine --p with --stylize intentionally. At --stylize 0, personalization has less room to express. At --stylize 500+, your preferences become more visible in the output.
• Share profiles with team members for consistent brand or project aesthetics across multiple users.

When not to use personalization

Personalization is not always the right tool. There are situations where it can work against you.

• When matching a specific client reference. Use --sref with the reference image instead of --p, which would push toward your taste rather than theirs.
• When exploring outside your comfort zone. If you always generate in your preferred style, you miss unexpected discoveries. Try prompts without --p occasionally.
• When the prompt already fully specifies the style. If you have written detailed style descriptors, --p may conflict rather than enhance.
• When working on technical or documentary imagery where personal style preference is irrelevant.

Common mistakes

• Stopping Style Creator after a thin set of rankings. A weak profile barely moves results; keep ranking until tests with and without --p show a clear difference.
• Treating --p like an image reference. Personalization biases taste. It does not lock a specific character, product, or layout the way --sref or --oref can.
• Ranking only one subject type, then expecting the profile to guide portraits, products, and abstract work equally well.
• Using --p when the brief is to match a client reference. Prefer --sref (or Omni Reference when appropriate) so the job follows their look, not yours.
• Stacking long style prose and --p at the same time so the prompt and profile pull in different directions.

Related guides

• For building consistent visual systems across projects, see /blog/how-to-build-consistent-visual-systems-with-midjourney.
• For combining personalization with style references, see /blog/how-to-combine-references-style-and-personalization-for-design-work.