Drop any file to identify it
No upload. No signup. No sending your file halfway across the internet.
We tell you what it is, right here in your browser.
Drop it!
Let go to identify this file.
Couldn't identify this file
Need to convert it? fwip it →
OpenEXR is the image format that Hollywood uses. Developed by Industrial Light & Magic (the VFX studio behind Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Marvel films), it stores images with 16-bit or 32-bit floating-point colour channels. That means it captures the full dynamic range of a scene — from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights — in a single file, without the clipping that 8-bit formats like PNG and JPG suffer from.
The format is the standard for VFX compositing, CGI rendering, and colour grading. When a render engine produces an image of an explosion, the EXR file preserves the subtle glow details and the blinding-bright core simultaneously. Compositors can adjust exposure after the fact without losing detail — something impossible with 8-bit formats.
Blender, Nuke, After Effects, and Houdini all read and write EXR natively. For viewing, DJV (free) and mrViewer (free) are purpose-built EXR viewers. Photoshop opens EXR but tone-maps it to 8-bit for display, which misses the point. For sharing outside VFX workflows, tone-map to PNG or JPG — EXR is a working format, not a delivery format.