Project OpenImageIO started as ImageIO - an API that was part of Gelato, the renderer software developed by nVidia.

In the same year the specification of the API and its header files was released under BSD license.

In April 2009 OpenImageIO was accepted into the Google Summer of Code program with four student slots.

September 2009 marked the release of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the first full-length feature film in whose production OpenImageIO, alongside OpenShadingLanguage, has been used as the texturing engine.

[1] OpenImageIO library comes with a few applications that demonstrate its features: As of January 2018 the library supports the following formats: OpenEXR, HDR/RGBE, TIFF, JPEG/JFIF, PNG, Truevision TGA, BMP, ICO, FITS as well as BMP, JPEG-2000, RMan Zfile, FITS, DDS, Softimage PIC, PNM, DPX, Cineon, IFF, Field3D, Ptex, Photoshop PSD, Wavefront RLA, SGI, WebP, GIF.