You are painting a product illustration, and three browser tabs are open in the background: the sneaker you are drawing, a lighting reference, and a color palette you liked. Every thirty seconds you alt-tab away, lose your place, and come back cold. The reference images tool in Krita fixes exactly that — it pins your references inside the canvas view, floating over your artwork, so the thing you are looking at and the thing you are making finally live in the same window.
The takeaway up front: Krita's reference images tool is a live style board, not a static import. You load the images you are working from, arrange them around (or over) your canvas, pull colors straight out of them, and keep them on screen while you paint. This guide walks the whole thing — loading references, pinning and scaling them, sampling color, saving the board for later — and then connects it to the bigger picture: the reference board you build here is the same input that drives an AI style-transfer workflow. Learn the technique once, and it pays off whether you are painting by hand or fusing a photo with a style.
What the reference images tool in Krita actually does
The reference images tool lets you place external images onto your Krita workspace as floating, non-destructive overlays. They are not layers — they do not export with your artwork, they do not merge, and they will never accidentally end up in your final PNG. They sit in a dedicated reference layer that lives above everything, purely for you to look at.
You reach it from the toolbox on the left (the icon looks like a small stack of photos) or from Tools → Reference Images Tool. Once it is active, the tool options docker at the top gives you the controls: add a reference, set how the references are stored, and adjust opacity and saturation. That last part matters more than it sounds — being able to dim a reference to 40% opacity or drop it to grayscale is what turns a pile of images into a working guide instead of a distraction.
One honest limitation to know going in: references are view-space objects tied to your document, not a separate asset manager. If you want a reusable library across many paintings, you will save reference sets (covered below) rather than expecting Krita to remember them globally. It is a painting aid, not a digital-asset system — and for the "keep my references in front of me while I work" job, that is exactly enough.
How to use the reference images tool: step by step
Step 1: Load your references
With the tool active, click Add Reference Image in the tool options and pick one or more files, or simply drag images from a folder straight onto the canvas. Each one drops in as a floating card you can move. Load the two or three that actually define what you are making — the subject, the lighting, the palette — and resist the urge to wallpaper the canvas with twenty. A focused board beats a crowded one.
Step 2: Pin, scale, and arrange
Drag each reference to the edges of your canvas, or float them over empty areas of the artwork. Grab a corner handle to scale, and use the rotation handle to angle a reference to match your composition. Park the subject reference near where you are drawing it and push palette or mood images to the margins. The goal is a glance-distance layout: everything you need to check is a small eye movement away, never an alt-tab.
Step 3: Tune opacity and saturation
In the tool options, drop the opacity of any reference you want to trace loosely against, or desaturate a reference when you only care about its values (lights and darks) and not its color. Painting form? Kill the saturation and read the tones. Matching a palette? Leave it full color and dim it slightly so it does not overpower your own work.
Step 4: Sample colors straight from the reference
This is the quiet superpower. Hold the color-picker shortcut (Ctrl with a paint brush selected, by default) and click on a reference image to sample its exact color into your palette. No exporting hex codes, no second app — you pull the color out of the reference and paint with it immediately. It is the fastest way to keep your artwork's palette honest to the mood you are chasing.
Step 5: Save the reference set
When your board is dialed in, save it so you do not rebuild it next session. In the tool options you can choose to embed references in the .kra file (they travel with the document) or link them (smaller file, but the originals must stay put). Embedding is the safer default for work you will hand off or reopen months later.
Reference images tool vs. a style transfer tool
A reference board in Krita and a style transfer tool are two answers to the same question — "how do I get that look into my work?" — and they sit at opposite ends of the effort scale.
The reference tool is manual and interpretive. You look at the reference and make every mark yourself; the reference guides your hand, but nothing is automatic. Total control, full authorship, slow.
A style transfer tool is automatic and generative. You hand it a subject and a style, and it re-renders the subject in that style for you — fast, and with far less control over the exact result. It is the difference between using a photo as a guide and using it as an ingredient. Neither is "better"; they suit different jobs. Illustrators lean on references for authored work, while anyone restyling a product shot at volume reaches for automation. If you want the full mental model for the automated side — the two dials of subject fidelity and style strength — our image style fusion guide walks through it end to end.
What a reference images tool is, beyond Krita
"Reference images tool" is a feature you will find across creative software — Krita, Blender, Clip Studio, and most serious painting apps ship some version of it. The shared idea is always the same: a way to keep source material pinned in your working view instead of scattered across other windows. The details differ (Blender's is a 3D-space image plane; Clip Studio has a sub-view window), but the workflow habit transfers everywhere.
The reason it belongs in your process at all is that good output starts with good, visible inputs. A reference you have to go hunting for is a reference you stop checking, and the moment you stop checking is the moment your proportions drift and your palette wanders. Keeping references one glance away is a small change that quietly raises the floor on everything you make — by hand or with AI.
Best style transfer AI: how to choose one
If you decide to move from hand-painting references to automated style fusion, judge a style transfer AI on four things, in this order:
- Control. Can you set how strongly the style applies and protect the subject, or is it one-shot and hope? Control is what separates a usable tool from a novelty.
- Subject fidelity. Does your product's shape, colorway, and logo survive the restyle, or does the model quietly redesign it? Test with something you know well.
- Output quality at your aspect ratio. A tool that only nails square social crops is useless for a tall product listing. Generate at the shape you actually ship.
- Cost and speed at volume. One hero image is cheap anywhere; a hundred product variations is where per-image cost and generation speed decide the winner.
There is no single "best" — the right choice depends on which of those four you weight highest. And a plain-spoken caution: no style transfer AI produces guaranteed, ready-to-publish results on the first try. Expect iteration, expect to curate, and watch for the classic failure modes — warped logos, melted text, and styles that bleed into and dissolve the subject. Restyle only images you own the rights to, keep real identifiable people out of it, and label AI-assisted output as AI-assisted when you publish.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the reference images tool in Krita? In the toolbox on the left (a small stacked-photos icon) or under Tools → Reference Images Tool. Its controls appear in the tool options docker along the top of the window.
Do reference images show up in my exported artwork? No. References live on a dedicated overlay above your layers and are excluded from exports and flattening. They are for your eyes only.
Can I pick colors directly from a reference image? Yes. With a brush selected, hold the color-picker shortcut (Ctrl by default) and click on the reference to sample its color straight into your palette.
How do I keep my references for next time?
Save the reference set with your document — choose to embed the images in the .kra file so they reopen with your painting, or link them if you prefer a smaller file and keep the originals in place.
Can I turn my Krita reference board into an AI-generated image? Not inside Krita itself, but the same references — subject, lighting, palette — are exactly what a style-transfer or fusion workflow takes as input. The board you build to paint from doubles as the brief you hand to an AI restyle.
Turn your reference board into a one-click fusion
A tuned reference board is a complete creative brief: this subject, this light, this palette. Painting from it by hand is one way to spend that brief. Feeding it to a generator is another. Build the board in Krita using the steps above, then see what FusionZap is building to turn that same photo-plus-style board into a one-click fusion — the automated companion to the hand-painted workflow you just learned.
