Organize your inspiration and speed up your creative process with PureRef!

PureRef for Mac

PureRef for Mac

  -  27.82 MB  -  Freeware
  • Latest Version

    PureRef 2.1.0 LATEST

  • Review by

    Sophia Jones

  • Operating System

    macOS 10.14 Mojave or later

  • User Rating

    Click to vote
  • Author / Product

    Idyllic Pixel / External Link

  • Filename

    PureRef-2.1.0_x64.dmg

  • MD5 Checksum

    44063aa56dc3d2786ac4a1fee7587921

PureRef for Mac is a lightweight photo manager and organizer application for macOS that was built from the ground up to provide streamlined and fast photo library management to painters, web designers, and anyone who has built a large collection of photos.

It promotes fast photo discovery, fast access to a wide array of basic and useful tools, and an easy way to access photos no matter how many albums and libraries are accessed. Developed by Idyllic Pixel, this graphics utility has received numerous updates that have made it one of the most useful tools for home users, students, and professionals who want to organize their inspiration and speed up their creative process.

By optimizing the process of photo management, the PureRef app for macOS enables artists and professionals to move away from finding inspiration in dozens of browser tabs and move to a more streamlined experience where inspiration is just one look away.

The app design PureRef for Mac is not what you may initially expect. Upon starting it, it shows on your desktop as a featureless dark floating area. To create your new photo library or mood board, the user simply needs to drag and drop pictures on it, and then arrange them into the desired position. The pictures can be zoomed, moved, rotated and the entire canvas area can be reduced in intensity by lowering its opacity.

This simple approach of making mood boards and photo walls can greatly help artists in helping them organize their inspirations and always keep them close in the view. To make the process of art creation as easiest as possible, users can even drag and drop photos from PureRef mood bard directly into the editor app (such as Photoshop).

The interface of PureRef is minimalistic, unobtrusive, and in fact, it appears only when you actively want to interact with it. In general use, the dark canvas is empty and hosts only images. If you do want to interact with these tools, they are always available via the right mouse click dropdown menu. The app allows adding quick notes, desaturation toggle, align image tools, and a wide variety of image sorting modes.

PureRef for macOS comes in a small installer, but once installed it becomes a portable application that can be easily copied to any other storage device. This makes it perfect for users who want to bring their mood boards and image albums with them on an external HDD or USB stick.

PureRef is 100% FREE and does not feature any locked features. The app is optimized for all modern versions of macOS (macOS Sierra version 10.12 or higher).

How to Use
  • Open PureRef and drag in image references
  • Right-click for context menu and layout options
  • Use spacebar to toggle full screen mode
  • Press Tab to hide interface elements
  • Drag edges to scale or resize canvas
  • Use Ctrl/Cmd + D to duplicate images
  • Right-click image for lock, opacity, or align
  • Save board as .pur for later edits
  • Use auto-save to prevent data loss
  • Export board as image or PDF if needed
System Requirements

macOS 10.11 El Capitan or later

Intel or Apple Silicon (via Rosetta)

2 GB RAM minimum

100 MB available disk space

OpenGL-compatible graphics card

PROS
  • Lightweight and efficient design
  • Unlimited canvas for image layout
  • Minimalist UI with quick shortcuts
  • Supports drag-and-drop from anywhere
  • Cross-platform file compatibility
CONS
  • No built-in cloud sync or backup
  • Limited image editing capabilities
  • Not optimized for large file exports
  • Basic UI may lack user guidance
  • No built-in grouping or layer tools
Also Available: Download PureRef for Windows

Why is this app published on FileHorse? (More info)

What's new in this version:

Features:
- Added togglable background Grid with snapping support. (G)
- Recent files thumbnails are now shown on new canvas
- Added an Image management tool with support for updating downscaling, image formats, and image locations
- First version support for translations. (Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish)
- Drawing: Straight lines and shapes tool
- Added aspect lock functionality to the Crop gizmo
- Added rich text editing support to the Comment dialog
- Added setting Auto optimize imported images, which replaces the setting "Auto downscale large images"
- Added Open scene location command. (Ctrl + Alt + L)
- Added Duplicate command. (Ctrl + D)
- Added Parent items command. (P)
- Added Edit item command. (Return)
- Added Arrange randomly command. (Ctrl + Alt + R)
- Added Normalize area command
- Added Replace image command
- Added Continuous deselect command that can be bound in the shortcut settings
- Added setting Drag and drop items into groups
- Added setting Double click title bar to maximize
- Added setting CPU core allocation to be able to tweak CPU resource usage
- Added setting Generate scene thumbnails to enable/disable thumbnail generation on save. May speed up scene saving speed depending on the size of the scene and configured performance mode.
- Added setting Clipboard copy image max size
- Added experimental setting Use screen color profile
- It is now possible to Adjust opacity of drawings and notes
- Added copy/paste text formatting commands for multi selected notes that can be bound in the shortcut settings

Tweaks:
- Changed the default shortcut for Draw to Ctrl + Shift + D to allow for Duplicate on Ctrl + D to conform with standards
- Notes: Creating a new note or drawing now only auto parents to the selection if an image or group is selected
- Notes: Pasting a note no longer parents it to the currently selected item. Use the new Duplicate command instead to keep the parent or drag and drop it in the Hierarchy. Configure with Auto parent pasted notes.
- Notes: Enable word wrap automatically when pasting long text lines
- Notes: Allow inserting links even if no text is selected
- Notes: Remove quotes when pasting a quoted path into the link editor
- Groups: Make it possible to add items into existing groups by selecting the group first before using the Group action
- Groups: Remember the last used group background color between restarts
- Groups: Moving items from different groups at the same time should no longer move them to the same group
- Toolbars are now hidden while transforming an item
- When exporting or copying groups, always include all children, if no child is selected
- Ask about replacing existing files when exporting images
- Undo during gizmo crop now resets the crop rectangle instead of exiting crop mode
- Use the aspect ratio of the window for all arrange methods
- Place new images in a grid during loading to reduce flickering
- When the setting Auto open last scene on start up is enabled it is now possible to hold Ctrl during startup to temporarily disable it
- Hide transform gizmo and toolbars during transform operations
- Show comment in item tooltips in the hierarchy view
- Windows: Made the glass preset a little bit more transparent
- Mac: Add support for the Open in setting

Fixed:
- Notes: Fixed issue where child items to notes would move as you edit the note
- Notes: Fixed issue where unlinking a link at the end of the note wouldn't work
- Notes: A new note wouldn't display selection highlight when using Shift + arrow keys
- Notes: Fixed some pre-formatted pasted text not being resizable
- Notes: Fixed Clear formatting not working on notes that start with a bullet point
- Notes: Fixed issue where bullet points wouldn't use the correct text color
- Notes: Fixed disappearing text after paste
- Notes: Better handling of copy/paste of list items
- Notes: List markers (bullets, numbers, check boxes) are now properly aligned and won't be clipped if they are large
- Notes: Use less memory, and even less when using the performance mode No cache (at the cost of performance)
- Notes: Retain auto-height when word-wrap causes the height to change during resize
- Always on top of: Don't restore the window with the parent if it was manually minimized
- Fixed issue where font sizes could change after changing appearance settings
- Fixed support for using a settings file located next to the PureRef binary
- Hierarchy: Fixed positioning of the name edit field
- Hierarchy: Edit actions are now blocked when the scene is locked
- Hierarchy: Fixed crash when Ctrl + dragging note to duplicate it in the hierarchy
- Hierarchy: Fixed navigating by typing
- Support new versions of JPEG XL
- Fixed issue where alignment padding couldn't be set to 0px
- Fixed issue where the color picker dialog wouldn't show up the second time on some screen setups
- Improved corrupt file recovery even more
- Fixed issue where loading a new scene during a crop operation would sometimes apply the crop to an image in the new scene
- Fixed issue where copying rotated items would produce incorrect bounds
- Fixed crash when loading images with a specific type of color profile
- Further performance tweaks to make loading scenes faster and have less of an impact on the general performance of the operating system
- Fixed issue where retrying a canceled update would fail
- Try to sort out thumbnail images from images dragged from Google
- Properly include all selected items when copying as image
- Fixed issue where text input focus was lost when panning the scene with a touch device
- Fixed issue where file names with '&' would show up as 'Untitled' in the hierarchy
- Don't exit draw mode when saving
- Set the Referer HTTP header when downloading images to avoid certain bot blockers
- Fixed rare crash when dropping an image from a browser
- Panning the scene with 2 fingers on a touch device should no longer sometimes move the window
- Fixed crash when copying a 1x1 px image
- Fixed gizmo cropping for items smaller than 2px
- Fixed rare hang when searching by typing in the hierarchy
- Windows: Workaround for a crash that happens when opening a file browse dialog caused by IBM Aspera Connect
- Mac: Fixed application freeze when disconnecting monitors
- Mac: Fixed issue where double clicking a .pur file while another file was loading could cause crashes
- Mac: Don't detect Logitech MX mice as trackpads
- Mac: Fixed issue where double clicking the title bar would not properly maximize the window
- Mac: Fixed issue where moving PureRef towards the top of the screen could make the resize handles show up in the wrong spot
- Mac: Adjustments to make always on top work better with stage manager
- Linux: Fixed issue where the native file dialog wouldn't be used
- Linux: Fixed missing system fonts