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 |
| Remove | Send the image to the Trash |
If an image file ever goes missing, the surface shows a placeholder rather than breaking. Removing a placeholder clears it; there is no file to send to the Trash.
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 book, entry, or note: moving it to the Trash takes its images along, and deleting it for good deletes them too.
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.
Removing an image is a soft-delete 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