BeeRef For Linux

Inspiration is one of the most important aspects of the creative process. Take, for example, the work of digital creators or classic painters.

In both cases, reference material offers a boost of inspiration, as well as a strong starting point in the creative process.

If your work relies heavily on having reference images easily accessible, then you might want to check out BeeRef.

BeeRef is a free, open-source, and cross-platform (works on Windows, macOS, and most Linux distributions) application that allows you to arrage and organize images while you create.

It's somewhat similar to both a classic image viewer and a collage creator, well, sort of. It has a few features that make it the perfect companion for artists who rely on the inspiration provided by reference images.

These include a nifty always on-top mode that disables the title bar of the app, and make its window float unobtrusively over other apps, as well as easy tools to move, scale, rotate and flip images.

Other noteworthy features include the ability to mass-scale images to the same width, height or size, mass-arrange images vertically and horizontally (useful for optimizing space), add text notes, as well as quickly zoom in and out.

Last but not least, it's worth noting that all images are embedded into the bee file as png files. Sadly, this is the only available embedding option available (however, more embedding options are in the works, according to the app's website).

Is BeeRef the best app of this sort? It's difficult to tell since there aren't many apps this out there. What we do know is that BeeRef does it job right, and works as advertised.

It's a reliable reference image viewer that can help you out a lot during your creative process.

In terms of drawbacks, there's only one embedding option, the GUI is not exactly what one might call stylish, and there currently aren't any options to export from iside BeeRef. However, none of these are dealbreakers.