During the preparation and use of the optical thin film, the absorption center will be generated due to defects and pollution. When the optical thin film is irradiated by a laser, the absorption center absorbs light energy and generates thermal signals, according to which the optical absorption loss of an optical film can be measured. The method proposed in this paper for measuring the optical absorption loss of a thin film based on a thermal imager. The addition of a reference sample in the test can reduce the impact of the changes of environmental temperature and the thermal imager noise on the temperature test results. Taking a certain area of the temperature field recorded by the thermal imager during the entire laser irradiation process can reduce the errors of the finite element simulation calculation caused by the laser pointing fluctuations and the unsatisfactory spot distribution. Using this method, the absorption loss of a small-size 45° high-reflection film was tested to be 7.60 ppm, and the spatial distribution of the absorption loss of the same batch of large-size optical film samples were tested. The absorption of the optical film measured by this method is consistent with the result of the laser calorimetry test. This method does not require long-term constant temperature and strict environmental temperature control, and the tested sample size is not limited.