A fast, native, HDR-first EXR image viewer for Windows. Hardware-accelerated and built for people who just want to see their images.
- Tiny footprint - Fits on a floppy disk
- Instant loading - D3D11 hardware-accelerated rendering
- HDR display support - auto-detects HDR-capable monitors and outputs scRGB linear
- Exposure & gamma control - adjust EV stops and gamma with real-time controls
- Sidebar - layer browser, histogram, exposure/gamma, sequence, and compare controls
- Multi-layer & multi-channel - browse EXR layers in a tree view, inspect individual channels
- Image sequences - auto-detects numbered frames (
render.0001.exr…); step through frames or play them back smoothly, prefetched into RAM - Playback - play/pause, adjustable frame rate, loop / play-once / ping-pong, and a scrubbable timeline that shows prefetch buffering
- Compare two images - Split, Difference, Add, or Over blending of any two images, layers, or frames
- Per-layer exposure - each layer (e.g. RGB vs. Z depth) keeps its own auto-computed exposure
- Histogram overlay - per-channel histogram with luminance
- Pixel inspector - live RGBA readout under cursor in the status bar and right-click to copy
- Pixel grid - sub-pixel grid overlay that fades in at high zoom levels
- Multi-image tabs - open multiple EXR files, tab interactions to close
- Dark & light themes - follows your Windows appearance setting, DPI-aware
- Drag and drop - drop
.exrfiles onto the window to open them - Fullscreen - borderless fullscreen on the current monitor
- Trackpad & touchscreen - pinch-to-zoom, click-drag to pan, single-touch drag
| Feature | Support |
|---|---|
| Scanline images | Full |
| Tiled images | Full |
| All compressions (PIZ, ZIP, ZIPS, RLE, PXR24, B44, B44A, DWAA, DWAB, HTJ2K) | Full |
| Half-float (16-bit) pixels | Full (stored natively as 16-bit half) |
| Float (32-bit) pixels | Full |
| Luminance/chroma (Y/C) images | Full (auto-converted to RGBA) |
| Data window offsets | Full |
| Multi-part images | Full (browse every part's layers via sidebar) |
| Multi-view / stereo | Default view only |
| Deep images | Not supported |
| Integer pixel types | Not supported |
| Multi-resolution (mipmaps) | Full |
| Arbitrary channels (Z, normals, IDs) | Full (browse and inspect via sidebar) |
| Chromaticities / color profiles | Auto-converted to Rec. 709 (with Bradford adaptation) |
| Action | Input |
|---|---|
| Open file | Ctrl+O |
| Reload | Ctrl+R |
| Close tab | Ctrl+W |
| Next / previous tab | Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
| Next / previous frame (sequence) | → / ← |
| First / last frame (sequence) | Home / End |
| Play / pause (sequence) | Space |
| Fit to window | Ctrl+0 |
| Actual size (1:1) | Ctrl+1 |
| Zoom | Scroll · pinch (centered on cursor) |
| Pan | Click-drag · middle mouse drag · touch drag |
| Exposure ±0.25 EV | Shift+Scroll · horizontal scroll · + / - |
| Gamma ±0.05 (SDR) | ] / [ |
| Cycle histogram channel | C |
| Channel display mode | Shift plus: ~ RGB · 1 R · 2 G · 3 B · 4 A · 5 No-alpha |
| Toggle pixel grid | G |
| Toggle fullscreen | F11 |
| Exit fullscreen | Esc |
Download the latest installer or zip from Releases.
EXRay uses Bazel with MSVC on Windows.
git clone https://github.com/hughes/EXRay.git
cd EXRay
bazelisk build //:EXRay
The built binary is at bazel-bin/EXRay.exe.
- Bazelisk — the recommended Bazel launcher. Install via WinGet:
winget install Bazel.Bazelisk - MSVC — Visual Studio 2019/2022 or Build Tools. When installing, make sure to include:
- Workload: "C++ build tools" (or "Desktop development with C++") — this includes
cl.exe,link.exe, etc. The default Build Tools install does not include the compiler. - Component: Windows 10 SDK (any recent version, e.g. 10.0.19041.0) — the SDK headers and libraries are required; the bin-only tools installed by some other packages are not sufficient.
- Workload: "C++ build tools" (or "Desktop development with C++") — this includes
- Windows 10+
EXRay does not collect, transmit, or store any user data. It includes no telemetry or analytics. The only network request EXRay makes is an optional update check against the GitHub Releases API (api.github.com) to notify you when a newer version is available. No personal or usage data is included in this request. In the event of a crash, a diagnostic minidump is saved locally to your %TEMP% directory — it is never sent anywhere automatically.
EXRay is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
Uses OpenEXR (BSD-3-Clause) - see THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.