OpenRef

OpenRef is a free and open-source reference canvas for artists and visual creators. It is a community fork of BeeRef with an original, themeable canvas-first interface and efficient drawing, arrangement, and navigation workflows.

OpenRef is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by proprietary reference-board products.

Highlights

• Arrange, scale, crop, rotate, flip, and annotate reference images.
• Draw smooth freehand marks, lines, arrows, rectangles, and ellipses.
• Navigate an effectively infinite, pointer-centered canvas with the mouse.
• Use OpenRef's custom color studio and reversible erase previews.
• Choose from seven original themes—including Sakura, Deep Ocean, Forest, and Warm Paper—and place drawing controls in any canvas corner.
• Keep an expanding visual workspace around content, then trim it explicitly with Fit Canvas.
• Save complete boards as portable native SQLite .openref files. Legacy .bee boards remain importable/openable; the first save creates an .openref copy and leaves the original .bee unchanged.
• Create rich notes with bold, italic, underline, and strikethrough text, including plain-text paste when formatting should be discarded.
• Insert reference images at their native size; OpenRef does not alter the source image or automatically fit the camera when an image is inserted.

Install

Download the macOS or Windows build from Releases, or run from source with Python 3.9–3.12:

git clone https://github.com/seanbud/openref.git
cd openref
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/python -m pip install -e .
.venv/bin/openref

On Windows, use .venv\Scripts\python and .venv\Scripts\openref.

OpenRef source is released under GPL-3.0-or-later. Official binaries include PyQt6 and are distributed under GPL-3.0-only. The original BeeRef project and Rebecca Breu deserve full credit for the foundation this fork builds upon.

See SOURCE_CODE.txt for corresponding source access, NOTICE for attribution, and COMPANY_USE.md for practical organizational and contractor deployment guidance. Third-party components and licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.