OpenEXR is a 16- and 32-bit, floating point file format with greater dynamic range than existing 8- and 10-bit file formats. It does not require a graphics card and is fully compatible with the floating-point pixel formats supported by the latest graphics hardware. Its lossless data compression achieves compression ratios of 2:1 for scanned film images.

New features in the latest version include support for tiled images, a new Pxr24 compressor that was contributed by Pixar Animation Studios, and support of higher dynamic range YCA images with sub-sampled chroma channels.