What do you use for saving reference images?

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I’d like something like Pinterest that isn’t actually Pinterest (see rant below). Ideally something that won’t get indexed by search engines.

I really hate Pinterest. I use Google to find reference images and it does a fine job of finding what I’m looking for. The problem with Pinterest is that it is almost always going to be at the top of the search even though it is not the original source for an image. This becomes an even bigger problem when the Pinterest image is taken directly from a Google search, creating a circular link loop. It can be virtually impossible to find the original full resolution image sometimes when someone has pinned it. Pinterest also caches these images so that if the original source goes away the pin remains intact and will come up in your Google searches without any evidence that the link goes nowhere. This is an even bigger headache when looking for cooking recipes in my experience. I would go so far as to say that this is likely illegal in some cases, where licensed images are cached to Pinterest without any reference or link to the original image. Pinterest has effectively claimed ownership of the art on it’s site without proper attribution or respect to the original artist.

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If you want actual photos, try unsplash or 500px. Neither holds a candle to Pinterest when it comes to searching for references, but the images are uploaded directly by the original photographer, which should address your concern about the original source.

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Hi

I go on pexels.com

Grum999

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I too hate Pinterest for the same reasons. When using Google search, I use -pinterest and most of the time it works.

I use not only Pexels but also Pixabay for searching for reference images. (It’s built in to Infinite Painter so that’s how I know about that one.)

I keep a folder on my device for all reference images as well as a folder on Google Photos that I share with friends.

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@bobonthenet I can’t stand Pinterest for the reason you and @CrazyCatBird mentioned. It’s not Pinterest’s fault, though. All those unlinked images are from users who upload screen captures. That breaks the link. Can’t stand that.

To save reference pics, I use BeeRef. It’s open source and very light on system resources. You can set it to always be in top which means it’s a great reference to have open while painting.

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I forgot about also using PureRef on Windows for saving the reference images that are used in a project.

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I use pureref and really like it. Beeref looks cool but unfortunately doesn’t seem to want to run on my machine and it looks like development has been abandoned. There is a discussion in the GitHub repo and the original author hasn’t been active in months. I always appreciate a good open source alternative so I’ll keep an eye on that. I think to suit my purposes though I’m just going to save stuff by named category folders in Dropbox.

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