OpenEXR is a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by 
Industrial Light & Magic for use in computer imaging applications.

OpenEXR is used by ILM on all motion pictures currently in production. 
The first movies to employ OpenEXR were Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, 
Men in Black II, Gangs of New York, and Signs. Since then, OpenEXR has become 
ILM's main image file format.

OpenEXR's features include:

    * Higher dynamic range and color precision than existing 8- and 10-bit 
      image file formats.
    * Support for 16-bit floating-point, 32-bit floating-point, and 
      32-bit integer pixels. The 16-bit floating-point format, called "half", 
      is compatible with the half data type in NVIDIA's Cg graphics language 
      and is supported natively on their new GeForce FX and Quadro FX 3D 
      graphics solutions.
    * Multiple lossless image compression algorithms. Some of the included 
      codecs can achieve 2:1 lossless compression ratios on images with film 
      grain.
    * Extensibility. New compression codecs and image types can easily be added
      by extending the C++ classes included in the OpenEXR software distribution.
      New image attributes (strings, vectors, integers, etc.) can be added to 
      OpenEXR image headers without affecting backward compatibility with 
      existing OpenEXR applications. 
    * Support for sterescopic image workflows and a generalisation to 
      multi-views.
      
ILM has released OpenEXR as free software licensed under the modified BSD 
license.

The distribution is divided into the following sub-modules:
    * IlmBase
    * OpenEXR
    * OpenEXR_Viewers
    * Photoshop
    * d_exr
    
Please see the README files of each of the individual directories for more
information.

A collection of OpenEXR images are available from the adjecent repository:
 openexr-images