HyperRef Download

Figure drawing

Figure drawing references get their own place

Poses you save from Safari go into collections like Seated, Standing and Reclining. Start a slideshow from any of them and each pose stays up for 30 seconds, 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes.

Tidy your camera roll
A chalk figure study on blue paper by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, with the HyperRef icon as a fig leaffiled!
Figure · 01

Why not keep figure references in Photos?

Sooner or later you hand someone your phone to show them a trip, and they keep swiping past the last beach photo. The next one is a nude figure study. HyperRef never saves to the Photos library.

unsorted
PhotosRecents · 4,812
  • Brunch
  • Beach
  • Figure · 43
  • Dog
  • Receipt
  • Wedding
  • Sunset
  • Figure · 44
  • Parking spot
  • Dog again
  • Tree
  • Whiteboard
  • Figure · 45
  • Baking
  • Screenshot
  • Dog, blurry

Figure studies, mixed in with everything else.

HyperRefCollections · 6
  • Figure · 45
  • Hands · 112
  • Feet · 31
  • Drapery · 19
  • Skulls · 22
  • Gesture · 300

Each reference in its collection.

01 · save

Pull a page of poses at once

Share a reference site to HyperRef from Safari and tick the poses you want. They go into the collection you choose, whether that's Seated, Standing or Reclining.

HyperRef's Select Image(s) screen over an Unsplash page, with its painting of a seated figure ticked

02 · study

See the pose as light and shadow

With Pro, the Value filter reduces a pose to as few as 2 values or as many as 36. At nine, the big shapes of light and shadow on the figure are all that's left to look at.

The Value filter reducing the same seated figure to nine tones, with its controls open

03 · draw

Gesture practice on a timer

Start a slideshow from any collection, with each pose up for 30 seconds, 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes. Use the short timings for gesture and the longer ones for a full study, the way a life drawing class runs.

HyperRef's slideshow showing the seated figure, with 18 seconds left on a 30-second timer

04 · lock

Nude reference stays behind a lock

Life drawing means nude reference, and some of it you'd rather keep to yourself. With Pro, lock that collection and its images stay hidden until you unlock it with Face ID or your passcode.

HyperRef's Collections list with Figure Drawing locked, a lock in place of its cover, between Landscapes, People, Architecture and other collections

Three ways to read the same pose

With Pro, Value reduces it to a few tones, Poster to a few flat bands of color, and Pixels to large blocks.

The seated figure painting as saved, with no filter
Original
The seated figure under the Value filter, reduced to nine tones
Value · 9
The seated figure under the Poster filter at 6, in a few flat bands of color
Poster · 6
The seated figure under the Pixels filter at 20, broken into large blocks
Pixels · 20

Sorted the way you practice

HyperRef's Collections list with Figure Drawing at the top, then Anatomy and Poses

Collections in the order you use them

Figure Drawing, Anatomy and Poses each get a collection, and you can move the one you're working on this week to the top.

Nothing else sorts them

Nothing in the app suggests, ranks or likes an image, so your collections stay in the order you put them.

Common questions

Will my figure references show up in Photos?

No. HyperRef never saves to the Photos library, so the images you save to a collection stay in HyperRef and out of your camera roll.

Can I lock a collection?

Yes, with Pro. The collection shows a lock in place of its cover, and its images stay hidden until you unlock it with Face ID or your passcode.

How long does each image stay up in a slideshow?

You choose 30 seconds, 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes. The shorter timings suit gesture work, and five or ten minutes gives you time for a longer study. Slideshows are in the free version.

Is Pro a subscription?

No. HyperRef is a free download that holds 5 collections and 50 images. Pro is a one-time $4.99 and adds unlimited collections and images, the image filters, and collection locking.

Is HyperRef only for figure drawing?

No. It works for any subject you draw from, such as landscapes, textures or skies. Figure work is where keeping references out of Photos matters most.