From Image to Prompt: How to Reverse Engineer Midjourney Prompts Using AI Vision

We have all been there. You are scrolling through your feed—whether it’s Twitter, Pinterest, or the Midjourney community showcase—and you stop dead in your tracks.

You see an AI-generated image that is absolutely stunning. The lighting is perfect, the texture is realistic, and the composition is breathtaking. You want to create something similar, but you hit a wall:

You have no idea what prompt they used.

Was it "cinematic lighting"? "Unreal Engine 5"? "Octane render"? Without the original prompt, trying to recreate a specific style in Midjourney or Stable Diffusion feels like guessing a password by smashing your keyboard.

But there is a workaround. It’s called Prompt Reverse Engineering, and you can do it instantly using the AI Vision tools right here on Lens Go.

In this guide, I’m going to show you how to turn any image back into text, allowing you to "steal" the style (ethically) and learn how to build better prompts.

The Logic: Image-to-Text-to-Image

To understand how this works, you have to understand that AI models like Midjourney are "Text-to-Image" generators. They rely on keywords to build a visual.

To reverse engineer an image, we need an "Image-to-Text" generator—also known as Computer Vision.

Lens Go doesn’t just "see" a cat. It sees "A fluffy Maine Coon cat, golden hour lighting, depth of field, bokeh background, highly detailed fur texture."

By extracting these hidden visual tokens, we can construct a prompt that forces Midjourney to recreate that exact vibe.

Step-by-Step: How to Reverse Engineer a Prompt

Here is the exact workflow I use to analyze viral AI art and learn how it was made.

Step 1: Analyze the Source Image

Find the image you want to replicate. It could be a photograph, a digital painting, or another AI generation.

Save it to your device and upload it to the Lens Go analysis tool at the top of our homepage.

Step 2: Extract the "Visual DNA"

Once Lens Go analyzes the image, don't just look at the summary. Look at the specific adjectives and nouns it identifies.

For example, if you upload a picture of a futuristic city, a human might just say "cool city." But Lens Go might output:

"Cyberpunk cityscape, neon blue and magenta lighting, wet pavement reflections, towering skyscrapers, dystopian atmosphere, volumetric fog, cinematic composition."

This is your gold mine. These are the keywords (tokens) that Midjourney needs to understand the style.

Step 3: Structure Your New Prompt

Now, take the output from Lens Go and format it into a Midjourney command.

A good Midjourney prompt follows this structure: [Subject] + [Environment] + [Lighting/Style] + [Parameters]

Using the analysis from Step 2, your prompt becomes:

/imagine prompt: A futuristic cyberpunk cityscape, towering skyscrapers, neon blue and magenta lighting, wet pavement reflections, volumetric fog, dystopian atmosphere, cinematic composition --ar 16:9 --v 6.0

Step 4: The "Remix" Technique

The true power of reverse engineering isn't just copying; it's remixing.

Now that you have the structure of the prompt (the lighting, the mood, the camera angles), you can swap out the subject.

Want to see that same cyberpunk style, but inside a forest? Keep the "Visual DNA" keywords you got from Lens Go, but change the subject:

/imagine prompt: A dense ancient forest, neon blue and magenta lighting, wet moss reflections, towering trees, volumetric fog, cinematic composition --ar 16:9

Why This is Better Than "Describe" Commands

Midjourney has a built-in /describe command, so why use an external tool like Lens Go?

The answer is Semantic Understanding.

Sometimes, internal tools hallucinate or focus on the wrong details. Lens Go is tuned for "Scene Deconstruction." We focus on identifying the relationships between objects and the lighting conditions—two things that are critical for high-quality prompt engineering.

We help you identify if an image looks "soft" because of diffuse lighting or because of a painterly style. That distinction matters when you are trying to generate a masterpiece.

Expert Tip: Hunting for "Magic Words"

As you use Lens Go to analyze more images, keep a notepad ready. You will start to notice patterns. You might find that the AI consistently detects words like:

• Chiaroscuro (for dramatic contrast)
• Isometric (for 3D style rooms)
• Knolling (for organized flat-lay photography)

These are "Magic Words." Once you learn them via reverse engineering, you can use them in all your future prompts to instantly level up your AI art game.

Conclusion

You don't need to be a poet to be good at Midjourney. You just need to understand the vocabulary of visuals.

By using AI vision to analyze the images you love, you are effectively taking a masterclass in prompt engineering. Stop guessing what keywords were used and start analyzing them.

Ready to find your next prompt? Scroll up and upload an image to Lens Go now.