C# Image.Clone Out of Memory Exception

Question

Why am I getting an out of memory exception?

So this dies in C# on the first time through:

splitBitmaps.Add(neededImage.Clone(rectDimensions, neededI

Answer 1

Clone() may also throw an Out of memory exception when the coordinates specified in the Rectangle are outside the bounds of the bitmap. It will not clip them automatically for you.

Answer 2

I got this too when I tried to use the Clone() method to change the pixel format of a bitmap. If memory serves, I was trying to convert a 24 bpp bitmap to an 8 bit indexed format, naively hoping that the Bitmap class would magically handle the palette creation and so on. Obviously not :-/

Answer 3

Make sure that you're calling .Dispose() properly on your images, otherwise unmanaged resources won't be freed up. I wonder how many images are you actually creating here -- hundreds? Thousands?

Answer 4

I found that I was using Image.Clone to crop a bitmap and the width took the crop outside the bounds of the original image. This causes an Out of Memory error. Seems a bit strange but can beworth knowing.

Answer 5

This is a reach, but I've often found that if pulling images directly from disk that it's better to copy them to a new bitmap and dispose of the disk-bound image. I've seen great improvement in memory consumption when doing so.

Dave M. is on the money too... make sure to dispose when finished.

Answer 6

I struggled to figure this out recently - the answers above are correct. Key to solving this issue is to ensure the rectangle is actually within the boundaries of the image. See example of how I solved this.

In a nutshell, checked to if the area that was being cloned was outside the area of the image.

int totalWidth = rect.Left + rect.Width; //think -the same as Right property

int allowableWidth = localImage.Width - rect.Left;
int finalWidth = 0;

if (totalWidth > allowableWidth){
   finalWidth = allowableWidth;
} else {
   finalWidth = totalWidth;
}

rect.Width = finalWidth;

int totalHeight = rect.Top + rect.Height; //think same as Bottom property
int allowableHeight = localImage.Height - rect.Top;
int finalHeight = 0;

if (totalHeight > allowableHeight){
   finalHeight = allowableHeight;
} else {
   finalHeight = totalHeight;
}

rect.Height = finalHeight;
cropped = ((Bitmap)localImage).Clone(rect,    System.Drawing.Imaging.PixelFormat.DontCare);