Every reference you collect, in one place you own.

• Video, built in

  Videos live beside your images. Scrub on hover, step frame by frame, loop or export an A-B section, and play clips on a canvas with independent audio and optional muted autoplay.

  

  0:12· frame 302

  A 0:11LoopB 0:14

• Not just images

  A workspace indexes images and video out of the box. Turn on documents, design files, drawing app files, 3D and CAD, fonts, archives, code, or your own extensions, and they land in the same grid with a file-type icon: searchable by name, taggable, and organized like everything else, with a cover image you pick.

  PSDhero-key-art.psd# key art

  BLENDclocktower-blockout.blend

  PDFstyle-guide-v3.pdf

  Switched on per workspace, next to your images

• Auto Tagger

  An on-device engine suggests tags, reads text, and describes images. Review results, edit recognized text, add your own tags, and block or rename suggestions. Offline and opt-in.

  

  Suggested tags

  # library# bookshelves# interior+ Add all

• Tag manager

  Marquee select across your tags, restyle or delete a whole block at once, and pull a usage count for any tag when you want to know what is actually earning its place.

  # anatomy# lighting# anatomy_old# anatomyy# foliage

  2 selected · 0 uses

  RestyleDelete

• Search by meaning

  Describe what you want, like 'dramatic lighting', and refern surfaces it even when nothing's tagged.

  dramatic lighting

  

  

  

  

  4 matches · none of them tagged

• Import from Eagle, PureRef & Allusion

  Bring Eagle folders and metadata across, rebuild a PureRef 2.x board as an editable canvas, or restore Allusion's colored nested tags. Each importer keeps the source library unchanged.

  Eagle library

  3,204 items · folders & tags

  Done

  PureRef board

  moodboard-final-v2.pur

  62%

  Allusion backup

  allusion-export.json

  Queued

• Keep your metadata

  Reads embedded keywords, ratings, descriptions, and sources (EXIF, IPTC, XMP) as you add images.

  

  osaka-golden.jpg

  1620 × 1080 px

  Keywords · from EXIF

  # sunset# golden hour# city

  Source

  Twitter / X

• Linked copies

  NEW

  Let one physical file appear in multiple folders without duplicating it. Every linked copy shares the original media and metadata, and Eagle imports preserve multi-folder placements automatically.

  

  autumn-leaves.jpg

  One shared file

  3 folders

  References / Autumnlinked

  Projects / Palette studylinked

  Study / Warm lightlinked

• Linked references

  Crops, groups, and the canvases an image lives in all stay connected back to the source.

  

  autumn-leaves.jpg

  3 connections

  Warm light cropcrop

  Golden hourcanvas

  Autumn palette studygroup

• Edit in place

  Crop and adjust brightness, contrast, and color without ever touching the original file.

  

  Brightness

  Contrast

  Saturation

  Original file untouched

• Pixel art stays pixel art

  Flag a file as Pixelated and it renders with hard, crisp edges at any zoom, in the grid, the viewer, and on the canvas. No more blurred upscales, and is:pixelated finds every sprite again.

  Rendering

  Pixelated

• Timed study

  Practice from your own references, then review a calendar of sessions, statistics, timezone-aware streaks, notes, outcomes, linked work, and replay history.

  Session history

  5-day streak

  M

  T

  W

  T

  F

  S

  S

  12 sessions · 4h 18m this month

  Gesture warm-up

  Notes saved · linked work added

  Replay

• Reference overlay

  Pin any window on top, dial down its opacity, and click straight through it while you work.

  pinned reference

  

  click-through

• Multiple windows

  Pop any image or canvas out into its own window. Lay references side by side, spread them across monitors, and keep working in the main app.

  gamcheon.jpg

  

  Summer trip · canvas

  

• Drag it straight out

  Pull anything out of the grid and drop it into another app or your file manager as a real file. One item, a whole selection, a folder, a canvas, or a group, on every platform.

  Drop as files

  Drag out

  3 files

• Hover action keybindings

  Hover a grid item and use configurable keys to open, rename, move, copy, create a linked copy, add it to a canvas, or send it to trash. Active shortcuts also appear in context menus.

  

  Under pointer

  winter-spear.jpg

  Context menu

  Your bindings

  OpenO

  Linked copyL

  Move to trashT

• Many folders, one library

  Point a single workspace at several folders at once, even across different drives. refern indexes them together while every file stays exactly where it is.

  References

  D:\Art\References

  HDD

  Client work

  E:\2026\Clients

  NAS

  Downloads

  C:\Users\me\Downloads

  SSD

  Indexed together as one workspace

• Hidden folders

  Hide a folder, or a whole content root. It stays indexed but drops out of search, grids, pickers, and counts, so drafts and private material stay out of the way. One click brings it back.

  Anatomy1,284

  Client draftsHidden

  Environments947

• Custom data folder

  Keep a large library on a slow drive while its database, thumbnails, and backups live on a fast SSD. Your original images never move.

  Image library

  D:\Art\References

  HDD

  Database & thumbnails

  C:\refern\data

  SSD

  Your original images never move

• Built for huge libraries

  A streaming indexer keeps libraries of hundreds of thousands of files responsive. Select with clicks, modifiers, a drag marquee, or the corner selector, and turn on Legacy click selection if you prefer one-click opening. Then move, tag, rename, or trash tens of thousands of items in one go.

  24,318 selected

  MoveTagTrash

• Recover from a backup

  If a library's database is ever lost or corrupted, refern restores it in one click from an automatic backup or a refern export.

  Automatic backup

  Today, 09:12

  Restore

  Automatic backup

  Yesterday, 21:40

  refern export

  refern-library.zip

Built for illustrators and concept artists. And every creative who collects.