OutofMemoryException - Loading Extremely Large Images

Question

I'm trying to load an extremely large image (14473x25684), but I'm hitting into a memory limitation.

Here's a simple program to demonstrate the problem:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    string largeimage = @"C:\Temp\test_image.jpg"; // 14473x25684

    Image i = Bitmap.FromFile(largeimage); // OutofMemoryException was unhandled
}

Now I understand that the issue isn't relevant to how much physical memory I have, but rather is an addressing limitation. Is there anything I can do to get around this limitation?

The image is indeed valid and it opens fine in Photoshop (VM Size: 916MB) and ACDSee. Also don't bother to Google the dimensions as the dimensions listed aren't exact. :)

Thank you for your time.

Answer 1

The Bitmap class will require around 1.5GB of memory to hold that instance. The .NET memory allocator normally chokes around the 1GB mark.