Merge branch 'jkingsman-cleanup-readme' into develop

README.md

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+# OpenEXR
+
+
+**OpenEXR** is a high dynamic-range (HDR) image file format developed by
+Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) for use in computer imaging applications.
+ILM subsequently released the source code and adjoining material as open source software.
+
+The distribution has evolved to include support for stereoscopic and deep
+images.  Weta Digital, Disney, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Pixar, DreamWorks
+Animation and other studios have made contributions to the code base.
+The file format has seen wide adoption in a number of industries.
+
+The library, including all contributions, is released under the modified BSD license. 
+
+OpenEXR's features include:
+
+* Higher dynamic range and color precision than existing 8- and 10-bit
+  image file formats.
+* Support for 16-bit floating-point, 32-bit floating-point, and
+  32-bit integer pixels. The 16-bit floating-point format, called "half",
+  is compatible with the half data type in NVIDIA's Cg graphics language
+  and is supported natively on their GPUs.
+* Multiple image compression algorithms, both lossless and lossy. Some of
+  the included codecs can achieve 2:1 lossless compression ratios on images
+  with film grain.  The lossy codecs have been tuned for visual quality and
+  decoding performance.
+* Extensibility. New compression codecs and image types can easily be added
+  by extending the C++ classes included in the OpenEXR software distribution.
+  New image attributes (strings, vectors, integers, etc.) can be added to
+  OpenEXR image headers without affecting backward compatibility with
+  existing OpenEXR applications. 
+* Support for sterescopic image workflows and a generalization
+  to multi-views.
+
+## Added Feature highlights for v2 release
+
+* Flexible support for deep data: pixels can store a variable-length list
+  of samples and, thus, it is possible to store multiple values at different
+  depths for each pixel. Hard surfaces and volumetric data representations
+  are accomodated.
+* Multipart: ability to encode separate, but related, images in one file.
+  This allows for access to individual parts without the need to read other
+  parts in the file.
+* Versioning: OpenEXR source allows for user configurable C++
+  namespaces to provide protection when using multiple versions of the
+  library in the same process space.
+
+## Sub-modules
+The distribution is divided into the following sub-modules:
+
+* IlmBase
+* OpenEXR
+* OpenEXR_Viewers
+* PyIlmBase
+* Contrib
+
+Please see the README files of each of the individual directories for more information.
+
+A collection of OpenEXR images is available from the adjacent repository
+[openexr-images](https://github.com/openexr/openexr-images).