note that my statement wrt HIVE image engine is irrespective of using an external image engine, HIVE pulls the external images into the HIVE image engine. Even when publishing a photo in your account at postimage, and at some stage delete it, it still is available on the HIVE image engine. At least I think this is the case. The advantage of using an external image engine is that you can complete the whole post in a markdown editor.

BTW, what markdown editor do you generally use? Windows based? Mac based?

I use MacDown with some Steem/Hive config file I found a few years ago. But still, the preview is not 100% how it looks like in HIVE. Also hive.blog and peakd views differ slightly on formatting :(