EXR Format Supported and Unsupported Features
Author: brianpopowCreated Apr 17, 2026Updated Aug 21, 2026
Labelsformats:exr
This is a tracking issue for EXR features which are currently supported and which are not.
Supported pixel types:
- Half: 16-bit floating-point numbers
- Float: 32-bit IEEE-754 floating-point numbers
- Uint: 32-bit unsigned integers;
Supported compression's for decoding:
- NO_COMPRESSION: pixel data is not compressed
- RLE_COMPRESSION: run length encoding
- ZIPS_COMPRESSION: zlib compression, one scan line at a time
- ZIP_COMPRESSION: zlib compression, in blocks of 16 scan lines
- B44_COMPRESSION: lossy 4-by-4 pixel block compression, fixed compression rate
- B44A_COMPRESSION: lossy 4-by-4 pixel block compression, flat fields are compressed more
- DWAA_COMPRESSION: lossy DCT based compression, in blocks of 32 scanlines. More efficient for partial buffer access.
- DWAB_COMPRESSION: lossy DCT based compression, in blocks of 256 scanlines. More efficient space-wise and faster to decode full frames than DWAA_COMPRESSION.
- PIZ_COMPRESSION: piz-based wavelet compression
- PXR24_COMPRESSION: lossy 24-bit float compression, Pull-Request
- HTJ2K256_COMPRESSION: JPEG 2000 lossless coding, in blocks of 256 scanlines and using the High-Throughput block coder specified in Rec. ITU-T T.814 and ISO/IEC 15444-15. The compressor offers both speed and high coding efficiency.
- HTJ2K32_COMPRESSION: Same as HTJ2K256_COMPRESSION, but in blocks of 32 scanlines, More efficient for partial buffer access, but slightly less efficient space-wise.
Other EXR image features:
- Tiled images
- Multi-part EXR files
The EXR specification can be found here: https://openexr.com/en/latest/index.html
Source: SixLabors/ImageSharp