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TL;DR: a new Optimal sorting without breaking the order, trying to pull images together instead

I absolutely adore this application, it has so many great feautre, there's only one missing in my opinion. Optimal sorting breaks the order of images, so a smarter optimal soting would be amazing.

I have many tutorial projects where I make screenshots of all the steps, but it gets chaotic fast with the varying sizes. So I do Normalize Height for example, then start moving them together one by one.

An Smart Optimal sorting could do this by trying to pull the images together instead of also rearranging them in a square shape. Let's say I have 9 images, 5 in first row and 4 in second, a Smart Optimal sorting would pull 2 right next to 1, 3 to 2 etc. instead of rearranging into a 3x3 grid.

Thank you for the suggestion! Have you tried using the align shortcuts? Ctrl+Arrow will push the selected images in that direction.

We've also just released a beta version of PureRef 2.1.0 which includes an optional grid with snapping that could help with alignment as well in case you want to give it a try!

Thanks for the response! I didn't know about the align shortcut, it's actually pretty useful, and solves my problem partially. It's a bit more work, than having a single button do it for all the images at once, but way better than doing it manually.

I just tested the grid snapping, and it's good, I like the optional choice between lines or dots too. My only issue with it is, that grid constantly changes based on the zoom level. For example if I zoom in very close and match up two images perfectly, then zoom out, if I move one of the images, I cannot return it to the previous state, where it was before moving by snapping it, because the "lines" of the grid have changed.

While I know this is intentional for the grid to scale with zoom level and I do not have a better solution, would it be possible for the grid to scale but also keep its position? Meaning it could be constantly subdivided when zooming in and out, making sure the corners and lines of the grid stay the same no matter the zoom level. It's only a suggestion, but it might result in a more usable grid snapping.

I'd still love to have an automatic Arrange function that would do the same as Ctrl + Arrow does, with some sort of algorithm deciding and proioritizing when the images are not the same size. But for now the align shortcut will work quite well. Thanks again!

Thanks for the feedback on the new grid! Could you maybe make a small screen recording showing the issue? The grid should be subdivided like you say, so for example if you put your mouse cursor on one of the grid lines and zoom in, that line will stay in the exact same spot. Is that what you mean?

For the automatic arrange, it is a bit hard to understand how you mean in text, so if you have an idea of how you would like it to function and can make an example image, or know of any other program with similar functionality that would be super helpful!

Apologies for the delay, I haven't done any 3D work since then, but now downloading the latest beta, the issue with the grid getting misaligned have been fixed!

About my smart arrange idea, a simple example would be like this:

1. I want to move these images together: https://i.ibb.co/JwkG78HB/Screenshot-2026-01-27-215542.png
2. The Arrange > Smart feature would pull it together as such (which can be achieved with Ctrl+Arrow, but takes about 10+ action): https://i.ibb.co/k6ydgM1J/Screenshot-2026-01-27-215616.png
3. The current Arrange > Optimize pulls it together but switches position for some reason: https://i.ibb.co/nqTQfkhX/Screenshot-2026-01-27-215636.png

The Optimize acts a bit odd, especially with odd number of images, for example if it's 3 in a row, sometimes it puts two in one row, and 1 below the first. Couldn't figure out why yet. But I'm happy with the combination of Ctrl+Arrow and Grid to be honest, it would be just another great feature.

Thank you for working on this app continuously, it's truly the most "thought through" app I've ever used!

Thanks for the details and the kind words! The optimize action tries to fit the images in a rectangle with the same aspect ratio as the PureRef window, that might be why you get different results. But it is also not considering the start positions of images and just tries its best to make it as compact as possible. Basically what you would like to have is a command that does Ctrl+Up and then Ctrl+Left? With some smart handling for overlapped images as well probably.