Gridder vs Art Reference
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Gridder
Easily add customizable grid lines to your photos. Perfect for artists and illustrators, this tool lets you import images, adjust grid settings like line thickness and color, and export your work for sketching or reference.
- Import and crop images
- Customizable grid lines
- Adjust rows and columns
- Control line thickness and opacity
- Change grid line color
- Export images with grid
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Gridder is a customizable image grid overlay tool — designed for artists and illustrators who sketch from photo references or plan paintings. Import any image, crop it to your desired format, and apply a customizable grid. You can adjust the number of rows and columns, grid line thickness, opacity, and color to suit your style. When you're ready, export the final image with the grid applied for printing, sketching, or saving to your reference library.
Art Reference
This app provides digital reference tools for traditional artists working with physical media. It offers features like value studies, gridlines, side-by-side comparison, and composition adjustments to aid in creating accurate and balanced artwork.
- Value study mode
- Gridlines for accurate sketching
- Side-by-side reference and canvas view
- Crop and frame reference images
- Curated starter project collections
- Color harmony experimentation
- Offline functionality
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Artists Reference is made for painters, illustrators, and traditional artists who work with real materials, not pixels. It gives you the digital reference tools you need while you're creating physical art. Key Features - Gallery: Take a photo of your finished work, add a frame, and view them all together in your personal gallery. - Value Study Mode: Instantly view your reference in 7-value scale to see shadows and highlights or greyscale to see tone and contrast clearly. - Gridlines: Helps get your under-sketch down accurately. - Side-by-Side View: Compare your reference and your canvas at the same time, optimized for tablets and stands. - Crop and Frame Tools: Adjust composition and aspect ratio of your reference to match your canvas before you begin. - Collections: Curated starter projects to help you practice and improve, including Animals, Architecture, Botanical, Figure, Landscape, Master Study, Portrait, and Still Life. - Color harmonies: Experiment with color harmonies to define the feeling if your piece and save swatches - Offline Friendly: Works anywhere, even in the studio or outdoors. - Clean, Focused Design: No ads. No clutter. Just the reference tools you need. - All of your artwork is private and only saved in your personal icloud. No artwork is visble to the internet or AI models Made for Traditional Artists Whether you're painting with oils, gouache, watercolor, or charcoal, Artists Reference helps you translate what you see into confident compositions and balanced values. Start with curated Collections to build your skills, or bring your own references for any project. No AI art is used for any of the starter project references in this app. All photos are attributed to the original artists with links to their portfolio.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Gridder at none against Art Reference's 1. Gridder also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.7) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 26.0). Art Reference's advantage is ratings volume (3 vs 1). On price, ads, monetization model and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Art Reference sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Gridder asks for nothing beyond the download.
Gridder holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 3 respectively.
| Parameter | Gridder | Art Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 4.7 (3 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | — | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 3 — better |
| Update frequency | — | Every 11 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 12.0 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 34 MB | 182 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Qing Yan | Gil Osborne |
Customer experience
Gridder
Art Reference
In-app purchases
Gridder
No in-app purchases
Art Reference
- Lifetime Full Access$14.99









