RefCanvas - Reference Board

Endvoid

In-app purchases

About this app

Supercharge your creative process with RefCanvas, the ultimate reference board and mood board manager designed specifically for artists, illustrators, and designers.

Stop juggling multiple apps and browser tabs. Whether you're sketching, painting, or animating, RefCanvas lets you collect, organize, and interact with all your visual inspiration in one modern, distraction-free workspace. Use it seamlessly as a companion alongside your favorite 3d modeling or drawing apps like Ibis Paint, Infinite Painter, and Procreate.

🎨 Organize Your Inspiration
• Total Layout Control: Import images and GIFs, then move, scale, and rotate them to create the perfect custom layout for your project.
• Seamless Importing: Drag and drop files directly from your gallery, or paste images straight from your clipboard.
• Group & Manage: Use Nodes to group related references and multi-select to edit multiple images at once.
• Save Your Progress: Save your layouts as dedicated boards for future use, complete with auto-generated thumbnails for easy browsing.

🛠️ Built-In Artist Tools
• Color Picker: Tap and hold to extract the exact hex code from any reference to build your perfect color palette.
• Value & Tonal Studies: Instantly toggle grayscale to check the values of your references.
• Proportion Checks: Flip references horizontally and vertically to spot mistakes and study proportions.
• Draw & Annotate: Sketch directly over your references or add text notes to capture ideas before they fade.
• Source Links: Attach URLs to your images so you can easily revisit the original source.

🎞️ Advanced Animation Support
• Interactive GIF Timeline: Don't just watch animations - study them. Pause your favorite GIFs and scrub through the interactive timeline frame-by-frame to understand complex animation cycles.

📱 Optimized for Your Workflow
• Multitasking Ready: Fully supports split-screen and pop-up views so you can keep your references right next to your digital canvas.
• Flexible Exporting: Share your mood boards with others, export as SVG, or extract individual images and GIFs back to your device.

Bring your creative vision to life. Download RefCanvas today and build the ultimate reference board for your next masterpiece!

Ratings and reviews

Good app, used as a reference when drawing on my tablet. Was going to upgrade to the Pro version ($3.50, worth the price for me) but seen it hasn't been updated in 2 1/2 years. There was mention of added features in the next update back in 2023. That's the main reason for the 3 stars, not sure if this will ever be improved. As it is, it works great as a way to collect images that can be zoomed and moved around as needed but free version is limited to one board and a set number of images.

It's a pretty good mobile alternative to PureRef. I like that you can import gif animations. One big feature it's still missing is an auto-arrange photos, which would be very useful if you're importing 20+ images. There's also no way to change playback speed on gifs to aid in study. I'll increase my rating when these features get added in.

I was trying to find this app on my phone the other day and didn't realize the logo completely updated. This app in now SOOOOOOO much better than before. I kinda wish I gave it a lower rating the first time so I can mark it further up to express how far it has improved.

What’s new

Packing: Optimally/Vertical/Horizontal (optional packing on import)
Export references: separately (multiple in zip)
Export board as SVG (or selected only)
Better Nodes - More customization.
Added webp support.
Fixed order saving.
Added connections - connect references/nodes etc.
Drawing. (experimental)
Multiple bug fixes and improvements.