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Every file this organization owns sits in one grid: what you upload, what she generates, and what you build on the design canvas. The composer reaches into that grid without ever sending you to another tab.

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The library

Media in the left menu opens the whole shelf. Every file, newest first, eighteen to a page, with the pager underneath once there is more than one page. The same grid opens inside the composer when you press Insert Media, with one difference that matters. Hover a tile and two controls appear.
That delete is soft. The row is flagged, the grid stops showing it, and the file itself stays where it was written. A post that already carries it goes out exactly as you left it.

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Getting files in

Press Upload and pick files, or drag them straight onto the grid, which answers with Drag n drop some files here. Empty, the page tells you the same thing: You don’t have any media yet.
Try to drop more files while an upload is still running and she stops you with Upload current in progress, please wait and then try again. Nothing queues halfway.
The two type rows differ because the picker is permissive and the check happens on the way in. Hand it something outside the second list and it is refused after you choose it, not before.
The resize is on by default and it is why a 12 megapixel phone photo arrives as a small file. Self-hosters who want the original pixels can turn it off with DISABLE_IMAGE_COMPRESSION.
Turning compression off has a consequence on local disk storage. The backend checks every file it writes itself, and it caps images at 10 MB there, so an install storing files locally can start refusing large photos once nothing is shrinking them first. On Cloudflare R2 the browser uploads to the bucket directly and that cap never applies. See Uploads and storage.
Third place files come from: Import, next to Upload. That button only appears once your install has a media service connected, and it opens Import From so you can browse that service and pull files across. Full walkthrough on Third-party integrations.

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Finding one again

The search box sits above the grid and matches the name the file arrived with, ignoring case, filtering as you type. Clear it and the whole shelf comes back. Nothing matched reads No media matches your search.
One honest limit: an AI image or an AI video arrives without an original name, so search will not find it. Those you find at the front of the grid, which is where the newest thing always is.

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Alt text and video covers

This one lives in the composer rather than the library. Hover an attachment thumbnail under the editor and a settings icon opens Media Settings. The frame you pick is stored as a timestamp as well as a picture, and Instagram uses that timestamp to set the cover on a video or a reel. Clear Thumbnail puts it back to whatever the platform would have chosen.
Press Save Changes and the attachment on your post updates in place.

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AI images

AI Image sits in the attachments row under the editor, on any plan that includes AI.
Press it and one small window opens: a prompt box reading Describe the image you want to generate, and a row of styles.
1

Describe it yourself

The box starts empty on purpose. She does not borrow the text of your post, so what you describe is what gets drawn.
2

Press Generate

The window closes while she works. The composer buttons lock for the duration, which is deliberate, because nothing should schedule mid-generation.
3

She writes the brief first

What you typed goes to a writing model, which turns your one line and your chosen style into a long render brief, and the image model draws from that.
4

It arrives attached

The finished square image is saved into your library and attached to the post in one move.
One image credit per generation. Run the counter to zero and the generation simply does not happen, so check Plans and limits if a press seems to do nothing.

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AI video

AI Video sits next to AI Image, and it is the one button on this page that can be missing entirely. It renders only when your install has at least one video engine configured.
Two engines ship today, they need different keys, and they make very different things. Burned in means exactly that. The subtitles are rendered into the pixels, centered, so they survive every platform that plays a video without captions.
With both engines configured you get a Choose a video type list first. With one, she takes you straight into its form.

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Filling in the form

Two orientation buttons sit at the top of every engine, and vertical is already selected.
Veo3 asks for a Prompt of at least five characters, and takes up to three reference images from your media library underneath it. Pick a video by accident and she drops it from the selection, because that field is images only.
The list comes back live from ElevenLabs with a Play button beside each name, so you can hear one before you commit, and the first voice is chosen for you. From there she writes the slides, draws a picture for each one, narrates them in your voice, stitches the whole thing together with half-second fades, then burns the subtitles on.
The window header counts your remaining video credits while you work, and a generation spends one.
Miss a required field and the form tells you Please fill all required fields rather than spending anything.
Videos take real minutes, not seconds. The composer stays locked the whole time, and the clip attaches itself to the post the moment it lands in your library.

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The design editor

Sometimes you do not need a photo, you need a quote card with your colors on it. Design Media, also in the attachments row and on the same plans as AI Image, opens a full canvas over the composer: a side panel of templates, text and shapes on the left, a toolbar across the top, zoom controls at the bottom. A fresh page opens at 540 x 675 pixels, which is a portrait shape that survives most feeds.
Build the thing, then press Use this media. She flattens the canvas to a PNG, uploads it, and drops it onto the post.
Every export lands in your library as media.png, so a busy month leaves you a stack of them.
There is one extra tab in that side panel, marked AI Img. Type a prompt, press Generate, and the result appears as a thumbnail you can click. Click it with nothing selected and it lands on the canvas at its own size. Click it with an image element selected and it replaces that element’s picture instead, which is the fastest way to fill a template you already like. Your remaining credits sit next to the heading, and at zero the button relabels itself to send you to billing.
Running PostQueen yourself? The editor is the Polotno SDK and it wants one key, NEXT_PUBLIC_POLOTNO. Leave it unset and the canvas still opens, in a demo mode that is not fit for production. Setup and licensing live on Image and video editing.

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Where the files actually live

Every upload, every generated frame and every design export goes through the same storage setting.
That choice is not only about disk space. Instagram fetches your media by URL rather than accepting an upload, and TikTok does the same for photo posts, so those files have to be reachable from the public internet for the post to publish at all. TikTok video is the other way around: she uploads it to TikTok in chunks from the server.
Uploads and storage walks through both backends and the trap in the middle.

Uploads and storage

Local disk or Cloudflare R2, and why some networks need a public URL

Image and video editing

The one key that turns the design canvas on, and who bills you for it

Writing a post

Where every one of these buttons sits, and the three ways a post leaves the composer

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Next steps

Plans and limits

Where image and video credits come from, and what happens at zero

Third-party integrations

The Import button, and the services that fill it

When an upload fails

Payload limits, refused file types, and the video failures behind them

Upload from your own tooling

The same library, one API call away