Out Of Memory exception on System.Drawing.Image.FromFile()

Solution 1:

It's worth knowing that OutOfMemoryException doesn't always really mean it's out of memory - particularly not when dealing with files. I believe it can also happen if you run out of handles for some reason.

Are you disposing of all your bitmaps after you're done with them? Does this happen repeatably for a single image?

Solution 2:

If this wasn't a bad image file but was in fact the normal issue with Image.FromFile wherein it leaves file handles open, then the solution is use Image.FromStream instead.

using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(filePath, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
{
   using (Image original = Image.FromStream(fs))
   {
      ...

Using an explicit Dispose(), a using() statement or setting the value to null on the bitmap doesn't solve the issue with Image.FromFile.

So if you App runs for a time and opens a lot of files consider using Image.FromStream() instead.

Solution 3:

I hit the same issue today while creating Thumbnail images for a folder full of images. It turns out that the "Out Of Memory" occured exactly at the same point each time. When I looked at the folder with the images to be converted I found that the file that was creating the problem was thumbs.db. I added some code to make sure that only image files were being converted and the issue was resolved.

My code is basically

For Each imageFile as FileInfo in fileList
If imageFile.Extension = ".jpg" Or imageFile.Extension = ".gif" Then
    ...proceed with the conversion
End If
Next

Hope this helps.