Save references from anywhere. Find it when it matters.

One place for artists to collect, organize, and use visual references. An infinite canvas is built in, and every file stays on your computer.

Download for Free
v1.7.0 · Windows · macOS · Linux
refern.
My libraryReferencesNature

Organize and find

Tag, connect, and search the references you already have. Bring an existing library across without changing the source.

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.

The towering, light-filled bookshelves of Seoul's Starfield Library.
Suggested tags
# library# bookshelves# interior+ Add all

Search by meaning

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

dramatic lighting
Evening sun bursting past a sea stack.
A church silhouetted beneath a sunset sky.
A colonnade glowing in golden-hour light.
Golden-hour coastline with birds over the surf.
4 matches · none of them tagged

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

Import from Eagle, PureRef & Allusion

Bring Eagle folders and metadata across, rebuild a PureRef 2.x board as an editable canvas with its layout, notes, drawings, groups, scale, and fills, 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 at sunset from above.
osaka-golden.jpg
1620 × 1080 px
Keywords · from EXIF
# sunset# golden hour# city
Source
Twitter / X

Linked copies

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.

Original illustration of a character resting among fallen golden leaves.
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.

Original illustration of a character resting among fallen golden leaves.
autumn-leaves.jpg
3 connections
Warm light cropcrop
Golden hourcanvas
Autumn palette studygroup

Files and formats

Keep video, PDFs, working files, and images together. The viewer and grid adapt to each format without changing the original file.

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.

Birds caught mid-flight over an ocean walkway, paused on one frame in a video player.
0:12· frame 302
A 0:11LoopB 0:14

PDFs, built in

NEW

Turn on Documents for a workspace and PDFs get first-page grid previews, then open inside refern with continuous scrolling, search, text selection and copy, print, view rotation, page controls, and zoom.

PDF
style-guide-v3.pdf
3 / 18125%
Search this PDF
First-page grid previewContinuous pages

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
ZIPproject-archive.zip
Switched on per workspace, next to your images

Edit in place

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

Original illustration of a gold-haired girl lying in a field of yellow flowers under a blue sky.
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

Work with your references

Study, compare, and move references between refern and the tools where you make the work.

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
Seoul's night skyline below N Seoul Tower.
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
A hillside stacked with colorful houses.
Summer trip · canvas
Original illustration of two girls taking a selfie amid lush greenery.

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

Library and reliability

Use folders across drives, keep heavy library data where it performs best, and recover the database without touching your files.

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

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

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

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

Small details that add up.

Useful controls that stay out of the way until you need them.

Use refern in your language

NEW

Choose English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, French, German, or Italian during onboarding or in General Settings. Your choice is saved per profile, and non-English translations are currently in beta.

EN简繁ESPT한日FRDEIT
Saved per profileTranslations in beta

Choose thumbnail's backdrop

NEW

Set a file's grid thumbnail to Default, transparent, or a custom color without changing the source. Apply the same matte to an eligible file selection in one pass.

Default
Transparent
Custom

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.

Original illustration of a girl with a spear in an ice-blue battle scene.
Under pointer
winter-spear.jpg
Context menu
Your bindings
OpenO
Linked copyL
Move to trashT

Find its visual neighbors

Right-click an image on the canvas to fan out visually similar references, then pick one to place beside it.

Osaka at sunset selected as the source reference.

Capture straight into your library

Press a global shortcut to capture the screen under your cursor and save it directly into a folder in your workspace.

Global shortcut
CtrlShift4
Original artwork framed by the screen-capture selection.Save to References

GIFs with real controls

Play, pause, step frame by frame, scrub the timeline, and change playback speed instead of waiting for a loop.

Original animation artwork in the GIF player.18 / 42
0.5×

Make the grid yours

Switch between masonry, horizontal, and justified layouts, then tune item size, spacing, and the metadata shown below each reference.

Masonry
Horizontal
Justified

Shuffle for a fresh look

Sort any grid randomly, then shuffle again whenever you want a new mix of references.

416253
Random sort
Shuffle again

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

refern is a godsend for me. I have libraries of photo references I purchase from reference photography studios, but that piles up really quickly when you start getting those 600+ action pose reference packs. After a certain point it becomes almost impossible to find what you want searching through countless folders. But the ways refern allows you to organize everything makes all my photos searchable or easily found otherwise, so I can actually make use of all the photos I have packed away.
Amy H. · from the refern community Discord
“refern has become my research hub for character design and writing. I can save a wide range of references, organize them later in a way that makes sense to me, and keep everything personal and local.”
misha
“Refern at this point feels like an extension of my brain that I can interact with, losing it would lobotomize me”
MrSirSquishy
“Refern has a clean, modern interface that makes managing large image collections feel simple. It gives me the organization tools I need without getting in the way of actually browsing my assets.”
1n9_
“Such a miniscule software that solves a BIG issue, I say it's revolutionary too I'm very grateful to come across this application and for the time it saves me”
Kenny · @revachuli on IG

Save from the web.

The free refern Clipper saves images from any site, keeps the source, and lets you tag them before they reach your library.

ChromeFirefoxSafari
r.
refern Clipper
Connected
Save to
References / Web saves
Tags
architecturelightingAdd tag...
Filter page images
Found 18
3 selected

Before you download.

Everything you might want to know, answered.

Own your references. Forever.

Free 30-day trial, no card. Try the whole app before you pay. No subscription, nothing to cancel.

Download for Free
v1.7.0 · Windows · macOS · Linux
Artwork by @jaks024the creator of refern