AcademySoftwareFoundation/openexr

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1836 stars · 700 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

OpenEXR is the specification and reference C/C++ implementation of the EXR file format, the professional high-dynamic-range image storage format of the motion picture industry. It supports multi-part, multi-channel scene-linear image data with metadata, used in rendering, compositing, and DI pipelines.

Use cases

• read and write EXR HDR image files
• store multi-channel render passes for compositing
• deep compositing image storage
• photorealistic rendering output format
• high-dynamic-range image I/O in C++
• lossless compressed HDR image archival

When to choose

• you need industry-standard HDR scene-linear image storage
• your pipeline requires multi-part or deep image data
• accuracy, backwards compatibility, and data longevity matter
• you need a cross-platform C/C++ image format library

When to avoid

• you need to store volumetric or 3D scene data - EXR is 2D only
• you only need simple LDR formats like PNG or JPEG
• you want a comprehensive linear algebra or numerical library (use Imath's broader alternatives)

Facets

library · maturity stable

image-processing serialization file-system compression graphics image-processing media files windows cpp c cross-platform hdr exr-format vfx deep-compositing reference-implementation file-format linux macos

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