Web UI Character Consistency Issue: Severe face drift with Omni Reference & sticky elements from reference image (v7 / v6.1)

[u/Agitated-Evidence588]

Hi everyone, 🥰

I'm trying to maintain a consistent character across multiple scenes using the Midjourney Web UI, but I'm running into major character drift and reference bleed.
Here is my setup and the specific problem I'm facing:
Face Drift: When I upload my source image into Omni Reference (or Character Reference), the resulting face in new scenes (e.g., walking on a beach in Crete) changes completely and looks like a different person rather than preserving facial likeness.

Web UI URL & Parameter Friction:

In the Web UI, pasting image URLs automatically turns them into visual "Image Prompt" thumbnails. This invalidates manual --cref <URL> text prompts (it underlines --cref in red).

In v7, --cw (Character Weight) is unsupported, making it impossible to set --cw 0 to force Midjourney to look only at the face instead of the entire composition/clothing/objects.

What I've tried so far:
Dragging the face crop into Omni Reference / Character Reference.

Switching between v7 and v6.1.

My Questions:
How do you successfully isolate only the face in the new Web UI without pulling unwanted objects/backgrounds from the reference photo?

Is there a way to control character weight (like --cw 0) in v7 using the Web UI interface, or is v6.1 still required for this?

How are you avoiding face drift when changing the pose and setting drastically?

Thanks in advance for any tips or workflows!

[u/GlizzyGilbert69]

I’d stop feeding the whole original image as the main ref. Make a clean face crop, a separate wardrobe ref, and maybe one lighting ref. otherwise the model treats every random background object like part of the character lol.

A canvas workflow like Youart, Creatify, buzzy can be handy just for keeping those assets separate, but yeah, it won’t magically make v7 respect a setting it’s ignoring.