Media and Visual References
Authors work from visual references — a character's face, a location moodboard, a cover idea — and want them beside the thing they describe, visible while writing, not scattered across Pinterest, design tools, and folders. Writer Studio lets you upload an image and attach it where it belongs: a book cover, a character or location card, or a note. Your images are ordinary project files — they travel with the project, are backed up, and are recoverable, with nothing in the cloud required.
What you can attach
| Slot | What it is |
|---|---|
| Book cover | One image that represents the book; it is the cover carried into export |
| Entity avatar | A single portrait for a character, location, or any custom Entry Type with media turned on |
| Reference board | An ordered set of reference images on a character, location, or any custom Entry Type with media turned on |
| Note images | One or more images dropped into a note |
You can upload common image files (PNG, JPG, WebP).
Add and view
Upload an image and attach it to a slot — for a cover, set it on the book; for an avatar or reference, add it on the character or location card, or on any custom Entry Type card with media turned on; for a note, drop it into the note.
Viewing is first-class. The avatar and reference board show on the entity card, the cover shows on the book, and note images render inside the note — so you can see who and what you are writing while you write.
Manage
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Replace | Swap an image for a different one |
| Reorder | Change the order of images on a reference board |
| Caption | Add an optional short caption to an image |
| Delete | Send the image to the Trash |
While an image is in the Trash, its place shows nothing: no tile, no placeholder, and an empty cover or avatar slot. Restoring it puts it back where it was. If an image file goes missing for any other reason, the surface shows a placeholder rather than breaking. Deleting a placeholder clears it; there is no file to send to the Trash.
Restore a replaced cover or avatar
A book has one cover, and a Book Wiki entry has one avatar. If you set a new image and later restore the old one from the Trash, Writer Studio asks first, and the question says that the current image goes to the Trash.
- Use as cover or Use as avatar puts the restored image in its place and sends the current image to the Trash, unless the entry still uses that image elsewhere, for example on its reference board, where it stays.
- Cancel changes nothing: the restored image stays in the Trash.
Either way, no image is lost. If you choose another image for that place before you answer, Writer Studio keeps your newer choice and asks again. The AI Assistant cannot answer this question for you: when it restores a cover or avatar whose place is taken, it changes nothing, and you finish the restore in the Trash.
Resolve an image conflict in the Trash
Sometimes an image in the Trash cannot be restored or deleted forever, because its files clash with other files in its folder, for example after a sync or a copy. Writer Studio does not guess which file is yours: it changes nothing, the image stays in the Trash, and every file is kept.
- Read the message that Restore, Delete Forever, or Empty Trash shows on the image's row in the Trash. Beside it is a button named for your system's file manager: Show in Finder on macOS, Show in Explorer on Windows, Show in file manager on Linux. You also find it in the image's context menu and, while the image is open from the Trash, in the command palette.
- Click it. Your file manager opens the folder that holds the clashing file. Writer Studio does not move, open, or change any file.
- Move the clashing files out of that folder, for example to your desktop.
- Choose Restore or Delete Forever again.
The button stays available even when Writer Studio has paused editing to protect your work, because it changes nothing.
If instead the message says to reopen the project, close the project, open it again, and try again. If the message appears again, keep the image in the Trash: nothing is lost while it waits there.
Your images are yours
Images are file-first project content. Each image lives in a folder beside what it belongs to: book.media next to the book, <name>.media next to a Book Wiki entry or a note. So they:
- Travel with the project folder to another machine.
- Survive a database rebuild.
- Are covered by the Trash, by Backup, and by Version History, so whole-project restore brings them back as they were (see Safety).
- Go with their entry or note: moving it to the Trash takes its images along, and deleting it for good deletes them too. A book's images are in the book's folder: deleting the book moves them to the system Trash with it (see Deleting a whole book or project).
Images attached with a Writer Studio version before 1.11 stay in the project's media folder and no longer show in the app. Attach them again from that folder.
Deleting an image moves it to the Trash, so it can be restored like other content. Nothing about media requires the cloud — upload and view are fully local. The cover is the only image carried into export; avatars, reference boards, and note images are writing aids and stay out of the manuscript output. Images never go inside scene prose — the manuscript stays text.
Generating images with AI is a later capability. When it arrives, a generated image is just another source for the same attach step, and you approve it before it lands — see AI Assistant.
See also: Books | Characters | Entry Types | Notes | Safety