Methods and devices maintain the status of unaltered media currently available within physical media trays of a printing device and maintain the status of currently available media processing components of the printing device. The media processing components have elements that physically alter the unaltered media. Further, such methods and devices dynamically enable previously created virtual media trays (and/or create virtual media trays) based on the availability of the unaltered media and the availability of the media processing components. The virtual media trays virtually appear to contain virtual media that is physically different from the unaltered media currently available. Such methods and devices receive a request to print on a selected virtual media from one of the virtual media trays through the graphic user interface. Then, these methods and devices physically alter the unaltered media using the media processing components to physically change the unaltered media to the selected virtual media.