OpenEXR
.exr · image/x-exr · 2003 · Industrial Light & Magic
Hollywood’s HDR format for VFX renders. Tone-map to PNG/JPEG for viewing. Below is what EXR is best at, where it falls short, and how it compares — plus free, in-browser tools to convert EXR to and from other formats, with nothing uploaded.
OpenEXR came out of Industrial Light & Magic in 2003 and is the standard for VFX and 3D render output: 16/32-bit floating point per channel, unlimited dynamic range, arbitrary channels (depth, normals, motion vectors). To preview or share an EXR outside a compositing app, convert it to PNG or JPEG — EditItAll decodes the image and produces a viewable 8-bit version in your browser.
Compression
Lossless
Transparency
Yes
Animation
No
Browser display
None
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Float HDR — no clipped highlights ever
- The VFX industry standard
- Multi-channel (depth, AOVs)
Limitations
- Meaningless to browsers and normal apps
- Large files
- Needs tone-mapping for display
Best used for
- 3D render output
- VFX compositing
- HDR panoramas
Tools for EXR
Frequently asked questions
Is EXR lossy or lossless?+
EXR is lossless: it preserves every pixel exactly, with no quality loss.
Does EXR support transparency?+
Yes — EXR has an alpha channel, so it can store transparent areas. It is a still-image format (no animation).
Can browsers open EXR files directly?+
No — browsers can't display EXR in a page. Convert it to JPG or PNG first, which you can do here with nothing uploaded.
How do I open or convert a EXR file for free?+
Drop your EXR file into the EditItAll converter and choose an output format — it decodes and re-encodes entirely in your browser, with nothing uploaded, no account and no watermark. (There is no in-browser EXR encoder, so you can convert EXR to other formats but not save back to EXR.)