Images come in all shapes and sizes. In many cases they are larger than required for a typical
application user interface (UI). For example, the system Gallery application displays photos taken
using your Android devices's camera which are typically much higher resolution than the screen
density of your device.
Given that you are working with limited memory, ideally you only want to load a lower resolution
version in memory. The lower resolution version should match the size of the UI component that
displays it. An image with a higher resolution does not provide any visible benefit, but still takes
up precious memory and incurs additional performance overhead due to additional on the fly
scaling.
This lesson walks you through decoding large bitmaps without exceeding the per application
memory limit by loading a smaller subsampled version in memory.
Read Bitmap Dimensions and Type
The OutOfMemory
exception. Each type of decode method has additional signatures that let you specify decoding
options via the true while decoding
avoids memory allocation, returning null for the bitmap object but setting
BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
options.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.id.myimage, options);
int imageHeight = options.outHeight;
int imageWidth = options.outWidth;
String imageType = options.outMimeType;
To avoid java.lang.OutOfMemory exceptions, check the dimensions of a bitmap before
decoding it, unless you absolutely trust the source to provide you with predictably sized image data
that comfortably fits within the available memory.
Load a Scaled Down Version into Memory
Now that the image dimensions are known, they can be used to decide if the full image should be
loaded into memory or if a subsampled version should be loaded instead. Here are some factors to
consider:
Estimated memory usage of loading the full image in memory.
Amount of memory you are willing to commit to loading this image given any other memory
requirements of your application.
Dimensions of the target
Screen size and density of the current device.
For example, it’s not worth loading a 1024x768 pixel image into memory if it will eventually be
displayed in a 128x96 pixel thumbnail in an
To tell the decoder to subsample the image, loading a smaller version into memory, set true in your
public static int calculateInSampleSize(
BitmapFactory.Options options, int reqWidth, int reqHeight) {
// Raw height and width of image
final int height = options.outHeight;
final int width = options.outWidth;
int inSampleSize = 1;
if (height > reqHeight || width > reqWidth) {
if (width > height) {
inSampleSize = Math.round((float)height / (float)reqHeight);
} else {
inSampleSize = Math.round((float)width / (float)reqWidth);
}
}
return inSampleSize;
}
Note: Using powers of 2 for
To use this method, first decode with true, pass the options
through and then decode again using the new false:
public static Bitmap decodeSampledBitmapFromResource(Resources res, int resId,
int reqWidth, int reqHeight) {
// First decode with inJustDecodeBounds=true to check dimensions
final BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
options.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
BitmapFactory.decodeResource(res, resId, options);
// Calculate inSampleSize
options.inSampleSize = calculateInSampleSize(options, reqWidth, reqHeight);
// Decode bitmap with inSampleSize set
options.inJustDecodeBounds = false;
return BitmapFactory.decodeResource(res, resId, options);
}
This method makes it easy to load a bitmap of arbitrarily large size into an
mImageView.setImageBitmap(
decodeSampledBitmapFromResource(getResources(), R.id.myimage, 100, 100));
You can follow a similar process to decode bitmaps from other sources, by substituting the
appropriate