BuzzRef — A Feature-Enhanced Reference Image Viewer

BuzzRef is an actively maintained fork of BuzzRef by Rebecca Breu, released under GPL-3.0.

This fork focuses on incorporating community contributions, bug fixes, and new features that enhance the creative workflow.

What's Different from BuzzRef

New Features:

• Sketching/Drawing Mode — Press D to enter draw mode. Supports tablet pressure sensitivity, customizable brush size and color
• Movable Crop Rectangle — Drag the crop area to reposition it before applying
• Show Filename — Press F to display the filename of selected image
• Capture — Capture scene area or screen with Shift+A
• PureRef Import — Open .pur files directly to migrate from PureRef
• Improved pytest integration (command line flags no longer conflict)

Compatibility:

• Python 3.9+ support (including Python 3.13)
• Updated dependency constraints for better compatibility
• Improved web image download (ArtStation, Pinterest) with proper SSL and User-Agent handling

Installation

Stable Release

Get the file for your operating system (Windows, Linux, macOS) from the latest release.

Linux users need to give the file executable rights before running it.

MacOS X users, look at detailed instructions if you have problems running BuzzRef.

Development Version

To get the current development version, you need to have a working Python 3.9+ environment:

pip install git+https://github.com/kistf001/buzzref.git

Then run buzzref or buzzref filename.bee.

Features

• Move, scale, rotate, crop and flip images
• NEW: Sketch directly on the canvas with pressure-sensitive drawing
• NEW: Move crop rectangles before applying
• Mass-scale images to the same width, height or size
• Mass-arrange images vertically, horizontally or for optimal usage of space
• Add text notes
• Enable always-on-top-mode and disable the title bar to let the window unobtrusively float above your art program

Regarding the bee file format

All images are embedded into the bee file as PNG or JPG. The bee file format is a sqlite database inside which the images are stored in an sqlar table—meaning they can be extracted with the sqlite command line program:

sqlite3 myfile.bee -Axv

Options for exporting from inside BuzzRef are planned, but the above always works independently of BuzzRef.

Troubleshooting

You can access the log output via Help -> Show Debug Log. In case BuzzRef doesn't start at all, you can find the log file here:

Windows:

C:Documents and SettingsUSERNAMEApplication DataBuzzRefBuzzRef.log

Linux and MacOS:

/home/USERNAME/.config/BuzzRef/BuzzRef.log

Notes for developers

BuzzRef is written in Python and PyQt6. For more info, see CONTRIBUTING.rst.

Credits

• Original BuzzRef by Rebecca Breu
• Sketching feature (PR #150) by Cinderflame-Linear
• Crop rectangle improvements (PR #115) by DarkDefender
• Pytest flag fix (PR #117) by DarkDefender
• Show filename feature, SSL/User-Agent improvements by g-rix
• PureRef file format library by FyorDev (MIT License)

License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.