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Getting started with the media library

Learn how to create a media library in Frontify, organize and manage assets, and configure media library settings.

The media library provides a central place to store, organize, manage, and share your media assets in Frontify. It supports images and photography, videos and animations, audio files, documents, presentations, and other file types.

Create a media library

Create a media library within your brand to store and manage images, videos, audio files, documents, and other media assets in one place.

  1. Go to your brand and select Libraries.

  2. Select New library in the top-right corner.

  3. Choose Media library from the dropdown.

  4. Enter a name for your library.

  5. Optionally, select a workflow template and configure the available AI features.

  6. Confirm to create your media library.

For more information about workflow templates and AI features, including AI auto-tagging, see Library creation settings in Getting started with libraries.

Note: Account admins and owners can create libraries, depending on the permissions configured under Account → Required permissions. Editors can’t create libraries by default, but can be granted creation rights by an account admin. If you don’t have permission to create a library, contact your account admin.

Customize your media library details

After creating your media library, you can update its name, description, color, and cover image. These details help teams identify and distinguish libraries in the Libraries overview. The selected color also provides a background for the library header when no cover image is set.

  1. Go to your brand and select Libraries.

  2. On the Libraries overview page, find your media library and select the Settings (gear) icon on its tile.

  3. Update the library details as needed.

    • Name and description: Enter your changes and select the checkmark beside each field to save.

    • Color and image: Choose your preferred color or upload an image, then select Save to apply each change.

Explore your media library overview

The overview page provides a snapshot of your media library, helping you monitor asset activity, identify popular content, and find assets that need attention.

Open your media library and select Overview to:

  • Explore assets: View recently added assets or the most viewed and most downloaded assets over the last 7, 30, or 365 days.

  • Monitor expiration dates: Identify assets that are expiring soon or have already expired.

  • Review library activity: View total asset counts, recent additions and deletions, and expired assets.

  • Find connected information: View team members, connected guidelines, and access analytics.

Organizing and manage media assets

Once you’ve uploaded all your media, you can organize them in folders or collections again by triggering the ‘New’ button on your top-right.

Alternatively, you can multi-select your media by hovering over the media cards and ticking the box of the preferred assets in the top-left corner of each thumbnail. A bulk action toolbar will then appear at the bottom of the screen. Alternatively, you can select Edit at the top right of the screen.

From the bulk action toolbar at the bottom of the screen, you can move the selected media to existing folders, remove the assets from the library, or download them. You can manage your collections via the sidebar.

Updating information

By clicking the cogwheel in the media card, you can view and change asset information such as name, pixel ratio, and color space. The editing sidebar can also be used to edit metadata and settings of one or multiple assets at once from the overview. When editing in bulk, changes are staged so you can review them before clicking apply, with live progress displayed as updates process.

Taking action

The three dots on the right of the cogwheel enable you to trigger actions like downloading the media, replacing it, sharing, and deleting it. Some actions can also be carried out in bulk by selecting multiple asset cards and using the bulk action toolbar at the bottom of the screen for downloading, moving, or deletion.

In case you choose to share the asset, you can do so by sharing a public link, and you will also get the CDN link. By clicking the share function, you also have the possibility to embed the media to other websites and wikis, for example.

Inviting team members is still done via the team icon in the sidebar on your left-hand side.

When opening media in the asset view in the backend, asset information opens in the collapsible sidebar on the right. This is organized into sections including Metadata, Legal, Lifecycle, Collections, and Settings. But there is more to discover in the left-hand sidebar and actions at the top of the screen.

Visit our help article on Metadata to learn more about how to set-up, manage and edit the metadata in your library.

Under the Settings and Lifecycle sections in the sidebar, you will be able to control download options, set the asset lifecycle stage, and assign targets. Further material on these settings can be found under:

From the 'Relations' section in the sidebar, you can also relate media to each other. Put media with similar properties (topic, regions, for example) together. Read more about asset relations here. Set up asset relations by uploading the respective assets or using the asset chooser to browse the assets already existing in one of your projects.

You can also choose the Source Template of your asset, get an overview of the asset usage in your Guidelines and attach files related to the media.

If you want to download your media, you can download the original file, as it was uploaded, or crop it before downloading.

Configure custom metadata and notification

From the gear on the left side menu bar, you can add custom metadata and edit the existing ones. You can also define which notification about your media you want to receive.

Duplicate detection

You can identify which media have duplicates and manage them in this dedicated duplicate overview area. For more information, please read this Help Article

Media library asset protection

Similar to the Logo Library and Icon Library, the Media Library provides you the option of protecting assets. This can be configured in the Usage settings, and gives you better control over the download process.

To learn more about how to set up asset protection, please read this help article.

Link media to the guidelines

In case you want to represent your media in your Brand Guidelines as well, there are two ways to do so. First, you can set up a media section in your Style Guide and upload your media by either using the ‘Image’ or ‘Image Grid’ block. Second, you’re able to link the Media Library to your Brand Portal through the Navigation manager on the left sidebar.


The consumer view

When viewing the Media Library from its frontend view (entering it via your Guidelines), you will first see your Collections, then all your media at one glance.

From there, you can search for your media or collection using a keyword search or the filters set up by the guideline editor. You can also sort your collections and files by Newest, Oldest, Title A-Z, and Title Z-A.

If you open a collection, you can download it or share it.

Once you’ve opened an asset, you’ll be able to view basic information such as file and image size, the related assets, as well as the different file formats ready to download. When downloading the media, if there are multiple media formats attached to this asset, then the "download all" button will download a zip with all formats.

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