BeeRef

What is BeeRef?

BeeRef (beeref.org) is a free digital art utility application for Windows and Linux that lets you create a collage or board of reference images for drawing by dragging and dropping them in an infinite canvas. The canvas can be panned around and zoomed in and out easily, and the images can be cropped, rotated, scaled, and moved. The collage can be saved and loaded for later use.

Several digital art applications have their own built-in "reference image" feature, but it's generally limited. For example, FireAlpaca (MediBang Paint) can only display one reference image in a single panel. Clip Studio Paint works similarly but lets you navigate through images in a folder. Krita lets you place multiple reference images directly on the canvas, which is good in some cases, but bad in other cases. BeeRef would be an utility that could complement these software. For this, all you need to do is make BeeRef stay visible on top of other windows, so you can see the images in BeeRef while you use a drawing application.

Observation: BeeRef's interface is very clean and doesn't have a menubar visible by default—you must right click to access the actions from a context menu.