Why is there a memory leak when I do not .Dispose() Bitmaps that I .Save() to a MemoryStream?

Question

Say I create a Bitmap

Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(320, 200);

When I write it to some stream (in my case, it\'s a HttpResponseStream, as give

Answer 1

You must dispose the bitmap in order to release the GDI+ resources. It is that simple. It is one of the few times calling Dispose is required. If you are caching your bitmap to reduce disk access then clone the image and use the clone to save to the stream. I strongly recommend flushing, closing, and disposing of stream. When done, set clone and stream variables to null.