Image Settings

Image Menu

New
Creates a new Generated Image.
Open
Load image from a file.
Open Cache Render
Load the current scene’s render layers from disk cache, if available. This can be used to save RAM while rendering because the render layers do not have to be saved in RAM. This can also be used to recover some information from a fail render. For this to work, Save Buffers must be enabled.
Replace
Replaces the current image throughout the blend-file with another image.
Reload
Reload the image from the file on disk.
Edit Externally
Using the Edit Externally tool Blender will open an external image editor, as specified in the Preferences and load in the image to be edited.
Save
Save the image, if the image is already a file Alt-S.
Save As
Save the (rendered) image in a separate file Shift-S or you want to save it under a different name.
Save a Copy
Using Save as Copy will save the file to a specified name, but will keep the old one open in the Image editor.
Save All Images
Save all modified images. Packed images will be repacked.
Invert
Invert Image Colors
Invert the colors of an image.
Invert Channel
Red, Green, Blue, Alpha
Pack
Packs the image into the blend-file. See Packed Data.
Unpack
Unpack the image to disk.

Important

Rendered images are not automatically saved, they have to be saved to disk manually.

Image Panel

Image

Data-block menu.

New +
The New Image button opens a pop-up to configure a Generated image.

Source

See about supported Supported Graphics Formats.

Single Image

Still image or a single frame.

Image Sequence

Each frame is stored in a separate file. How to Opening an Image Sequence.

Frame
A label showing the current frame.
Further options
See Movie below.

Movie

Frames packed into a container.

Deinterlace
Removes fields in a video file. For example, if it is an analog video and it has even or odd interlacing fields.
Frame
Frames
Sets the range of frames to use.
Start
Global starting frame of the sequence, when the playback should start. This is a global setting which means it affects all clip users such as the Movie Clip editor itself, motion tracking constraints and compositor nodes.
Offset
Offsets the first frame of the clip. It adds an extra offset to the frame number when converting a scene frame to the frame number in the file name. This option does not affect tracking data or any other associated data.
Match Movie Length
This button sets image’s user’s length to the one of selected movie.
Auto Refresh
Automatically refresh images on frame changes.
Cyclic
Start over and repeats after the last frame to create a continuous loop.

Generated

Image generated in Blender.

Width, Height
The size of image in pixels.
Color
Sets the fill color if creating a blank image.
32 bit Float / Float Buffer
Creates a 32 bit image. This is a larger file size, but holds much more color information than the standard 8 bit image. For close ups and large gradients, it may be better to use a 32 bit image.
Type
Blank
Creates a Blank image of a single specified color.
UV Grid
Creates a checkerboard pattern with a colored cross (+) in each square.
Color Grid
Creates a more complex colored grid with letters and numbers denoting locations in the grid. It could be used for testing how the UVs have been mapped and to reduce stretching or distortion.

Common Options

File

Use for replacing or packing files.

Pack
Embed the resource into the current blend-file.
Path
Path to the linked file.
Open
Opens the File Browser to select a file from a drive.
Reload
Reloads the file. Useful when a file has been reworked in an external application.
Color Space

Color Space.

sRGB
Standard RGB display space.
Linear
Linear 709 (full range). Blender native linear space.
Linear ACES
ACES linear space.
XYZ
Standard linear XYZ space.
Non-Color
Color space used for images which contains non-color data (e.g. normal maps).
Raw
Same as Non-Color.
Filmic Log
Intermediate log color space of Filmic view transform.
View as Render
Applies color transform when displaying this image on the screen.
Use Multi-View
See Multi-View.
Alpha

Representation of alpha in the image file, to convert to and from when saving and loading the image. See Alpha Channel.

Straight
Store RGB and alpha channels separately with alpha acting as a mask, also known as unassociated alpha. Commonly used by image editing applications and file formats like PNG. This preserves colors in parts of the image with zero alpha.
Premultiplied
Store RGB channels with alpha multiplied in, also known as associated alpha. The natural format for renders and used by file formats like OpenEXR. This can represent purely emissive effects like fire correctly, unlike straight alpha.
Channel Packed
Different images are packed in the RGB and alpha channels, and they should not affect each other. Channel packing is commonly used by game engines to save memory.
None
Ignore alpha channel from the file and make image fully opaque.