One image, many roles
Different media can be used for different purposes, take pictures for example. One product can have many images, a main image, variant images, an environmental image, perhaps a dimensional sketch or a technical drawing?
With media roles, you can clearly tell feed®, users, and integrations which media serve which roles. The role is also linked to which product the media belongs to, so the same media can be linked to different products and have different roles. It is also possible that the same media has multiple roles, for example, an image could have the role of "Main web image" to identify what the website should use and at the same time the role of "Left catalog image" to be used in a catalog template...
Define the roles you need in the master data functionality, note that a distinction is made between images and other documents for these roles.
When created, just add them directly to the media in the product image.