PureRef is a floating board for arranging reference images while you work. The job it does — organizing a set of images you have already chosen into a layout you can see while painting or designing — is precise and well-done. The job it does not do is answering the question that comes later: "I know I saved a photograph of fabric with pleats, but which of my eight .pur files is it in?"
PureRef has no search. No way to look across one scene by a tag you wrote, no way to filter a scene by rating, and certainly no way to ask about all your reference files at once. At a hundred images, this is not a problem — you can scroll a board or open a .pur file by hand. At a thousand images, it becomes the defining characteristic of the tool, and the reason many PureRef users end up with a tangle of unsorted files on the side.
Why PureRef does not search
PureRef's handbook describes it as a minimal reference and mood board, and the design follows from that. It is a window you keep open beside your canvas, you drag images in from Finder or a browser, you arrange them, and you work. Everything PureRef does — always on top, transparent to mouse, drawing on the board, grayscale toggle, colour codes, coordinates — serves that workflow.
Search requires a library, a database, metadata you can query on. PureRef is neither. It is a collection of scenes, each one a .pur file holding the images you chose and the arrangement you built. Notes live on the board, not on the files. There is no tagging system, no ratings, and no index behind the scenes. You cannot ask PureRef a question; you can only move images around on a visible board.
This is not a limitation of the .pur format; it is a choice about what PureRef is for. It is genuinely a good tool for the job it chose. The problem is that the job — "arrange a curated set of images I am actively using" — is only half of what most people need to do with a reference library.
What happens as a PureRef library grows
When you start using PureRef, you have one .pur file and a clear memory of what is in it. Six months later, you have three or four scenes for different projects, and you still know which one has the building references and which has the fabric. A year in, you have fifteen .pur files with overlapping names: inspiration.pur, inspiration-old.pur, inspiration-archive.pur, references-architecture.pur, references-architecture-modern.pur, and on.
At this point, you have two problems PureRef cannot solve. First, you often cannot remember which file something is in, and there is no search to tell you. Second, you have a growing folder of reference images that never made it onto a board, because the board is for active work and the folder is where things pile up.
Many PureRef users solve this with discipline: keep the scenes lean, archive old ones, and maintain a folder structure alongside the .pur files. This works until it does not, usually the day you need a reference from three years ago and the folder has become a mess.
The experience of searching in PureRef versus in Coii Ref
In PureRef, to find an image:
- Try to remember which scene it is in.
- Open the .pur file.
- Scroll through looking for it.
- If you do not find it, close the file and try another.
- If you still have not found it, check the unsorted reference folder by hand.
In Coii Ref, to find the same image:
- Type a query:
tag:fabric rating:>=3 - Click one of the results.
The difference compounds. A photographer with five thousand images and ratings on most of them can find a reference in seconds. A PureRef user with the same library would have to remember which .pur file it is in, then scroll through dozens of boards, or have given up already and moved on.
This is why the search capability is the single largest architectural difference between the two. PureRef chose to be a board, Coii Ref chose to be an index. Both are coherent designs; they just solve different problems.
What you lose if you switch from PureRef
Switching from PureRef to Coii Ref costs you some real features. PureRef floats over your canvas and you can draw or add notes directly on the board. Coii Ref is a separate window. PureRef runs on Windows, macOS and Linux; Coii Ref is macOS only. PureRef is free for personal use; Coii Ref is $19 once.
The boards themselves are different. A .pur scene is self-contained and you can hand it to someone. A .coii-canvas is a description that references images on your drive, so it needs the folder to be meaningful. The trade-off is real and not in our favour on every dimension.
What you gain is the ability to run a query across your entire library and get an answer in milliseconds. Once you have a thousand images, this turns from a nice-to-have into the reason you made the switch.
Migration from PureRef
Migrating from PureRef is straightforward because it does not require import. PureRef has an export function — you can export all images from a scene, selected images, or all scenes at once, in their original format or as JPG or PNG.
Export the scenes you want to keep into folders, point Coii Ref at those folders, and the app indexes them in a first pass. The layouts do not come across — .coii-canvas is not the same as a .pur scene — but the images do, with all their metadata intact if PureRef wrote it to EXIF.
The key difference: Coii Ref leaves your images where they are. It does not move, copy or rename them. So you can export PureRef images into folders, trial Coii Ref against those folders during the 30-day trial, and delete them if you decide to stay with PureRef. There is no destructive step.
Many people use both. PureRef stays the board they keep open while working. Coii Ref becomes the search layer that answers "what have I got" when a client asks for something you are pretty sure you saved. The two do not compete; they solve different parts of the problem.
When search stops being optional
Somewhere between five hundred and five thousand images, depending on your memory and how often you need to find things, search stops being a convenience and starts being a requirement. At that point, PureRef's lack of search is no longer a limitation you work around. It is the single thing you wish it did.
If you have fewer than five hundred references and you are disciplined about organizing them into scenes by topic or project, PureRef is a complete tool. Its free tier for personal use is genuinely generous, and drawing on your boards is something Coii Ref cannot do at all.
If you have more than a thousand images across multiple drives, or if you frequently need to find a reference you are not actively using right now, search is not optional. PureRef is not the answer and wishing it had this feature will not make it faster. At that scale, Coii Ref's design — index everything, search everything, boards on top — becomes the tool that actually solves the problem.
The real comparison
This is not PureRef's fault. The tool was designed to solve a specific problem — "I have a curated set of images beside my canvas" — and it solves that brilliantly and elegantly. The mismatch appears the moment that curated set becomes half of a much larger library and you need to find the images that should be on the board.
Many people use PureRef and a folder management system side by side, which works until the folder becomes so large it stops working. At that point, the search capability becomes the deciding factor. Read how to organize reference images on Mac for the full landscape of approaches. The comparison with PureRef covers both products honestly, including the features PureRef has that Coii Ref does not. If you need a tool that doesn't copy your files, the landscape has more than two choices.
What makes the search difference matter is scale and frequency. If you search for a reference once a month, the lack of search is an inconvenience. If you search five times a day, it becomes your primary workflow, and a tool without search is not usable.
How tagged references change the equation
One strategy that works with PureRef is tagging your files so that at least the Finder can find them. Tags versus folders covers the landscape here, but the short version is that Spotlight does find tagged images, though not in a way that scales. A saved Spotlight search gives you a list of files rather than a thumbnail grid, which is useful up to a few hundred images and then stops being practical.
Coii Ref reads tags you create inside its own interface and makes them queryable from one line, alongside ratings, type, EXIF and every other property of the file. A tag system becomes a real tool for finding things, not just a way to mark something you already found.
This is also why many people who have invested in tagging with other tools end up deciding to re-tag inside Coii Ref. The payoff — a query line that finds exactly what you want in milliseconds — is worth the effort and time investment.
The path from PureRef
If you have spent time building .pur scenes and you are wondering whether Coii Ref is the right next step, the core question is scale. How many images do you have? How often do you find yourself unable to remember which scene something is in?
The key difference is that Coii Ref asks you a question and gives you an answer. PureRef asks you to remember which scene the answer is in. At small scales, memory alone is enough. At large scales, memory becomes exhausting and error-prone.
The 30-day trial comes with every feature and no card required, so you can find out what your actual scale is and whether search is something you will need at it. Many people discover that they need search more than they realized once they try it.
Read how to find a reference you saved two years ago for additional search strategies and scenarios. The 30-day trial comes with every reference feature and a full workspace to experiment with at no cost or commitment.