Prevent Memory Bloat When Loading Multiple Images In WPF

Question

I have a very simple WPF app which is used to preview images in any given folder one image at a time. You can think of it as a Windows Image Viewer clone. The app has a PreviewK

Answer 1

When you say preview, you probably don't need the full image size. So besides of calling Freeze, you may also set the BitmapImage's DecodePixelWidth or DecodePixelHeight property.

I would also recommend to load the images directly from a FileStream instead of an Uri. Note that the online doc of the UriCachePolicy says that it is

... a value that represents the caching policy for images that come from an HTTP source.

so it might not work with local file Uris.

To be on the safe side, you could do this:

var image = new BitmapImage();

using (var stream = new FileStream(currentFile, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
{
    image.BeginInit();
    image.DecodePixelWidth = 100;
    image.CacheOption = BitmapCacheOption.OnLoad;
    image.StreamSource = stream;
    image.EndInit();
}

image.Freeze();
CurrentImage.Source = image;