I wrote the following code to convert an image from sdcard to a Base64 encoded string to send as a JSON object.And it works great:
String filepath = "/sdcard/temp.png";
File imagefile = new File(filepath);
FileInputStream fis = null;
try {
fis = new FileInputStream(imagefile);
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
Bitmap bm = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(fis);
ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
bm.compress(Bitmap.CompressFormat.JPEG, 100 , baos);
byte[] b = baos.toByteArray();
encImage = Base64.encodeToString(b, Base64.DEFAULT);