References panel

Keep reference pictures and videos in tabs inside your project, pick colours from them, and show one on the canvas over or behind your artwork.

The References panel holds what you look at while you work: model sheets, colour designs, photos and video clips. They belong to the project and are saved in the .cls, but they are never a layer, never rendered and never exported.

Opening it#

Open it from Window ▸ References. It is off by default. The first time you open it, it joins the Navigator's tab group, or the Color or Layers panel's if the Navigator is not docked. After that it stays wherever you move it.

Tabs#

Tabs run across the top of the panel, and each one is a board of its own that you pan and zoom like the canvas. Click a tab to bring it forward. The + button at the end of the row adds an empty tab named Reference 1, Reference 2 and so on. Double-click a tab to rename it, or right-click it for Rename and Delete Tab. When there are more tabs than fit, they wrap onto another row.

Bringing pictures in#

• Import Pictures, the first button under the board, opens a file dialog for PNG, JPEG, BMP and WebP pictures and for videos. You can pick several files at once.
• Paste, the button beside it, or Ctrl+V while the panel has focus, adds the picture on the system clipboard, in the middle of what the panel is showing. This works on Windows and macOS.
• Drop files from your file manager onto the board to add them where you drop them, or onto the tab row to open a new tab for them. Files dropped together land side by side.

Pictures go into the tab in front. With no tab yet, or with a video tab in front, a new tab is made and named after the first file. A pasted picture's new tab is named Reference n instead. A file dropped on the panel never falls through to the canvas: one the panel cannot open is simply ignored. The same picture added twice is stored only once in the project.

Working on the board#

The buttons under the board, left to right. They wrap onto another row when the panel is narrow, and the ones that need a picture are greyed out on an empty tab.

Showing a tab on the canvas#

Show on Canvas puts the whole tab on the canvas, fitted inside it the first time. One tab at a time can be shown, and showing another takes its place. While the tab in front is the one on the canvas, two controls appear under the buttons: an opacity bar, the same one the Color panel uses, starting at 50 %, and Behind Artwork, which puts the pictures under your drawing instead of over it.

1. Click Move and Scale on Canvas. A frame with four corner handles appears around the pictures on the canvas.
2. Drag inside the frame to move them, or drag a corner to scale them while the opposite corner stays put.
3. Press Esc with the pointer over the canvas, or click the button again, to go back to your tool.

While Move and Scale on Canvas is on, your tools get no clicks on the canvas, and Space + drag still pans. The button is greyed out while the tab is locked.

Reference videos#

Import or drop a video (MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV, WebM or M4V) and it opens in a tab of its own, named after the file. The clip is linked by its path, not stored in the project, the same way a Video layer is, and it opens at once: its frames are decoded as they are shown.

The video keeps its own time, apart from the document's timeline. Under the board it has a ruler of its own. Click or drag anywhere on it to scrub, and turn the mouse wheel over it to step frame by frame. The red column marks the current frame, and the frame number and length show at the right of the buttons, as in 12 / 240.

With the panel focused and a video tab in front, the frame keys drive the clip instead of the document. Space plays and pauses it. The Previous Frame and Next Frame keys (. and ,) and the Left and Right arrows step through it. Home and End jump to the first and last frame.

Show on Canvas puts the clip's current frame on the canvas. A clip shown there keeps playing even with the panel closed. A clip nobody can see pauses.

Colors to Swatches#

1. Click Colors to Swatches.
2. Drag a box over a colour design sheet, or over the part of a picture you want. A click without dragging reads the whole picture.
3. Check the colours in the strip that appears under the board, then click Add to Swatches, or Cancel.

On a colour sheet, each colour cell is outlined on the board and the strip counts the colour cells found. The new swatches are named by row and column, 1-1, 1-2 and so on, so they keep the sheet's order. Over a drawing or a photo, every flat colour in the box is found, up to 16. Where too little of it is flat, its main colours are found instead, up to 8. Those swatches are named by their hex code.

Add to Swatches makes a new category in the Swatches panel, named after the tab, and makes it the active category. A name already in use gets a number after it. On a video tab, the frame on screen is read. Esc leaves Colors to Swatches.

Black and white view#

Black and White View on the panel's button row shows the tab in front without colour, to check the values in a reference. For your own artwork the Navigator has the same button, and Ctrl+Shift+Y turns it on from anywhere. See Canvas navigation.