Rochester Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival was established in 1993 by the name “mage Out” .The Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley, the Rochester Lesbian and the Gay Political Caucus were the main organizers. In 1996, the Rochester Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival was incorporated as an independent, not-for-profit corporation. Image Out, a community-based volunteer organization, has greatly helped in promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender visibility .The festival reaches not only to people within the greater Rochester gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community, but also to the general population of the entire Western New York region. Image Out is now the largest lesbian and gay film festival in Upstate New York and the second largest lesbian and gay film festival in all of New York State. 

The festival has been gradually gained popularity. While In 1993  it was held at two venues, in 2001 it was held at to five venues .The number of seats available and the parts of the city where films are screened has also been expanded. The aim of the Rochester Lesbian and Gay Film & Video Festival is to inform, entertain, educate, and enrich the Greater Rochester and Western New York community through the exhibition of multi-racial and multi-cultural films and videos, and through various artistic and educational programs by and about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. 

Image Out is an international event and it connects among people from all racial, religious, gender, sexual, ability, economic, class, age and ethnic groups. Image Out supports the distribution and exhibition of LGBT multi-media art forms, and the compensation for and recognition of the creative work of these artists.