# Create

> Make images and videos on purpose with three surfaces in Endless: Image, Video and Canvas. Learn when to use each one instead of a chat conversation.

Source: https://endless.app/docs/create

Chat can generate media too, and often that's the right way in — you describe what you're
after, Endless picks the model and makes it. The **Create** surfaces are for the other half of
the job: when you already know what you want, which model should make it, and how big it
should be.

## The three ways in

<Cards>
  <Card icon="<Photo />" title="Image" href="/docs/create/image">
    A prompt, optional reference pictures, and every setting the chosen model
    offers. One run, one set of results, on one page.
  </Card>

  <Card icon="<Video />" title="Video" href="/docs/create/video">
    The same composer, tuned for clips — and the expensive end of the catalog,
    so the estimate matters more.
  </Card>

  <Card icon="<PresentationScreen />" title="Canvas" href="/docs/create/canvas">
    An infinite board you share with your workspace. Generate straight onto it,
    next to what you're already looking at.
  </Card>
</Cards>

## Which one to use

<Cards>
  <Card icon="<ChatBot />" title="Use chat when you're still deciding" href="/docs/chat">
    You want ideas, variations on a brief, or the picture to come out of a
    longer piece of work. Endless chooses the model and can keep going after it.
  </Card>

  <Card icon="<Bolt />" title="Use Image or Video when you know the shot">
    You want a particular model, a particular size, a particular reference
    image. Everything the model can be told is a control, not a sentence you
    have to phrase well.
  </Card>

  <Card icon="<Layers />" title="Use Canvas when placement matters">
    You're arranging things — a moodboard, frames of a sequence, variations side
    by side — and want to generate into that arrangement with other people
    watching.
  </Card>
</Cards>

They aren't separate libraries. Whatever you make on any of them lands in the same place, and
you can start a picture on **Image** and drag it onto a canvas later.

<Cards>
  <Card icon="<Layers />" title="Where the output goes" href="/docs/create/where-output-lands">
    Everything generated becomes an asset — how to find it again, and who else
    can see it.
  </Card>
</Cards>

## Before you start: three things that can change what you see

<Callout type="warn" icon="<Toggle />">
  **A workspace can switch these surfaces off.*&#x2A; Image generation, video
  generation and Canvas are each separately controllable, and a workspace that
  turned one off doesn't show it in the sidebar — a saved link lands you back on
  the workspace home instead. The block holds when a run is requested too, not
  just in the interface: &#x2A;"Image generation isn't enabled for this workspace"*.
  If a colleague has a tool you don't, ask whoever runs the workspace.
</Callout>

<Callout icon="<Lock />">
  **Making something is a permission.*&#x2A; Every role can look; creating content is
  a capability a role either has or doesn't. On a canvas that's visible — a role
  without it opens the board with a &#x2A;*"Read-only"** badge and no generate bar.
  See [Roles and permissions](/docs/governance/roles-and-permissions).
</Callout>

<Callout type="info" icon="<Coins />">
  **Generating spends credits and the cost varies enormously by model.** The
  composer shows what the run you've set up will cost before you send it. A
  single video can cost many times what an image costs. See [Credits and
  spending](/docs/concepts/credits-and-spending) and [Models](/docs/concepts/models).
</Callout>