Speed up loading an image from disk in a windows forms (c#.net) app

Question

I\'m currently working on an app that allows the user to play (automatically scroll) through a series of local images. Usually there will be five or six on screen at once.

Answer 1

I came across this page which describes how to use the GDI+ API directly to load images. Very simple to use:

ImageFast.FromFile(@"C:\MyPhoto.JPG");

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Added to show speed of ImageFast over Image From File method

This uses the source code found here. The code was copied and pasted and required no changes.

Stopwatch watch = Stopwatch.StartNew();

string filePath = @"C:\TestImage25k.png";

Image fromFile = Image.FromFile(filePath);

watch.Stop();

Console.WriteLine("Image.FromFile     Ticks = {0:n}", watch.ElapsedTicks);

long fromFileTicks = watch.ElapsedTicks;

watch.Reset();
watch.Start();

Image fastImage = ImageFast.FromFile(filePath);

watch.Stop();

long fastFileTicks = watch.ElapsedTicks;

Console.WriteLine("ImageFast.FromFile Ticks = {0:n}", watch.ElapsedTicks);

Console.WriteLine("fromFileTicks - fastFileTicks = {0:n}", fromFileTicks - fastFileTicks);

The console output was

Image.FromFile     Ticks = 19,281,605.00

ImageFast.FromFile Ticks = 7,557,403.00

fromFileTicks - fastFileTicks = 11,724,202.00

You can see the impact of the ImageFast. Over time those 11 million saved ticks will add up.