Book cover designer uses the Midjourney editor to restyle, recolor and recompose covers

What they did

They put a premade cover image in the editor's Edit box and ask in plain language for a different render style (photo to illustration and back) or another cover's style, adding an sref code with --raw and --sw 1000 when the edit needs a push. For palette changes they attach a color reference image, and when that fails they put the color image in the Style Reference box instead, keeping the original in the Edit box. For layout they use an author's rough sketch as the edit image, and drop a second style image into the Edit box (not the Style Reference box) to keep control of style.

How it went

They say style changes and sketch-guided composition worked well, and they now offer authors restyles and palette changes on premade covers.

Worth knowing

• Results varied by prompt. Asking it to move subjects around inside an existing image failed in all three tries, and a cut-and-paste fix was only "sort of okay". They credit the sketch-for-composition idea to another Midjourney user.
• Price check: Midjourney: no free plan; Basic: US$10/month, or US$8/month on a yearly plan (US$96/year) (checked Oct 25, 2026).

Try it yourself

Paste this into a chatbot, then add your own details underneath.

I'm designing a book cover for a [genre] novel. Using the attached sketch as the layout, place [main subject] where the sketch shows it, keep the top third as empty negative space for the title, and render it in the style of the second attached image.

More people who did this

• u/gianni_no_mitaka (Reddit, Sep 1, 2026): Used the new attach-to-prompt feature in Midjourney 8.2 to guide composition with a rough sketch that included text.

Original post

See James (GoOnWrite)'s original post on Substack → (Sep 3, 2026)