


OpenEXR has support for color depth using: IlmImf = library made by Industrial Light & Magic ( Ilm) for low-level operations on the files with OpenEXR image format (Imf).exrdisplay, a sample application for viewing OpenEXR images on a display at various exposure settings.Half, a C++ class for manipulating half values as if they were a built-in C++ data type.The OpenEXR software distribution includes: Version 2.2, released August 2014, added the lossy DWA compression format. OpenEXR 2.0 was released in April 2013, extending the format with support for deep image buffers and multiple images embedded in a single file.

In 2007, OpenEXR was honored with an Academy Award for Technical Achievement. The format has been updated several times, adding support for tiles, mipmaps, new compression methods, and other features. It soon received wide adoption by software used in computer graphics, particularly for film and television production. OpenEXR was created by ILM in 1999 and released to the public in 2003 along with an open source software library. Python bindings for the library are also available for version 2.x. The OpenEXR library is developed in C++ and is available in source format as well as compiled format for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux. OpenEXR's library allows quick and easy access to the image's attributes such as tiles and channels. Since there are almost never two identical production pipelines, custom tools always need to be developed to address problems (e.g. OpenEXR's API makes tools development a relative ease for developers. If a compositer is not happy with the current level of specularity, they can adjust that specific channel. The multi-channel concept also reduces the necessity to "bake" in the aforementioned data to the final image. Since it can store arbitrary channels- specular, diffuse, alpha, RGB, normals, and various other types-in one file, it takes away the need to store this information in separate files. OpenEXR's multi-resolution and arbitrary channel format makes it appealing for compositing, as it alleviates several painful elements of the process. OpenEXR, or EXR for short, is a deep raster format developed by ILM and broadly used in the computer-graphics industry, both visual effects and animation. A full technical introduction of the format is available on the OpenEXR website.
