Question

I’m tracking down a pesky problem and I’ve narrowed down the problem down and realized it only happens when I’m dealing with an Image instance returned by Image.FromStream(). I have a utility method that returns an Image instance from a file using a Stream so I don’t have the file handle left open. Here is that utility method (nothing special):

public static Image ImageFromFileReleaseHandle(string filename)
{
    using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        return Image.FromStream(fs);
    }
}

When I try to save an Image loaded from the above method I’m getting an InteropServices.ExternalException “A generic error occurred in GDI+.”. The following code example will demonstrate this:

private void button6_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    var filename = @"D:\My Documents\My Pictures\2010-03-27 hangover hike.jpg";

    //  Get an Image instance
    Image image;
    using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        image = Image.FromStream(fs);
    }

    //  Save to a temp file - this is the code that throws the exception
    image.Save(Path.GetTempFileName());
}

If I load the image using Image.FromFile() I can save no problem:

private void button6_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    var filename = @"D:\My Documents\My Pictures\2010-03-27 hangover hike.jpg";

    //  Get an Image instance
    Image image = Image.FromFile(filename);

    //  Save to a temp file - this is the code that throws the exception
    image.Save(Path.GetTempFileName());
}

I can’t think of any additional information that would be helpful. Hopefully my code examples are simple enough that you can clearly see the problem.

Thanks,
Steve

Answer 1

try this instead

//  Get an Image instance
    Image image;
    using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(filename, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read))
    {
        image = Image.FromStream(fs);
        //  Save to a temp file - this is the code that throws the exception
        image.Save(Path.GetTempFileName());
    }

I think the using block is giving you issues