A generic error occurred in GDI JPEG Image to MemoryStream

Question

This seems to be a bit of an infamous error all over the web  So much so that I have been unable to find an answer to my problem as my scenario doesn t fit  An exception gets thrown when I save the image to the stream   Weirdly this works perfectly with a png but gives the above error with jpg and gif which is rather confusing   Most similar problem out there relate to saving images to files without permissions  Ironically the solution is to use a memory stream as I am doing      public static byte   ConvertImageToByteArray Image imageToConvert        using  var ms   new MemoryStream                  ImageFormat format          switch  imageToConvert MimeType                          case  image png                   format   ImageFormat Png                  break              case  image gif                   format   ImageFormat Gif                  break              default                  format   ImageFormat Jpeg                  break                     imageToConvert Save ms  format           return ms ToArray              More detail to the exception  The reason this causes so many issues is the lack of explanation     System Runtime InteropServices ExternalException was unhandled by user code Message  A generic error occurred in GDI    Source  System Drawing  ErrorCode -2147467259 StackTrace     at System Drawing Image Save Stream stream  ImageCodecInfo encoder  EncoderParameters    encoderParams     at System Drawing Image Save Stream stream  ImageFormat format     at Caldoo Infrastructure PhotoEditor ConvertImageToByteArray Image imageToConvert  in C  Users Ian SVN Caldoo Caldoo Coordinator PhotoEditor cs line 139    at Caldoo Web Controllers PictureController Croppable   in C  Users Ian SVN Caldoo Caldoo Web Controllers PictureController cs line 132    at lambda method ExecutionScope   ControllerBase   Object        at System Web Mvc ActionMethodDispatcher Execute ControllerBase controller  Object   parameters     at System Web Mvc ReflectedActionDescriptor Execute ControllerContext controllerContext  IDictionary 2 parameters     at System Web Mvc ControllerActionInvoker InvokeActionMethod ControllerContext controllerContext  ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor  IDictionary 2 parameters     at System Web Mvc ControllerActionInvoker  lt  gt c  DisplayClassa  lt InvokeActionMethodWithFilters gt b  7      at System Web Mvc ControllerActionInvoker InvokeActionMethodFilter IActionFilter filter  ActionExecutingContext preContext  Func 1 continuation   InnerException     OK things I have tried so far     Cloning the image and working on that  Retrieving the encoder for that MIME passing that with jpeg quality setting

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This article explains in detail what exactly happens: Bitmap and Image constructor dependencies

In short, for a lifetime of an Image constructed from a stream, the stream must not be destroyed.

So, instead of

using (var strm = new ... )  {
    myImage = Image.FromStream(strm);
}

try this

Stream imageStream;
...

    imageStream = new ...;
    myImage = Image.FromStream(strm);

and close imageStream at the form close or web page close.

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In my case the problem was in the path I was saving  the root C     Changing it to D  111  made the exception go away

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Had a very similar problem and also tried cloning the image which doesn t work  I found that the best solution was to create a new Bitmap object from the image that was loaded from the memory stream  That way the stream can be disposed of e g    using  var m   new MemoryStream          var img   new Bitmap Image FromStream m        return img      Hope this helps

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Save image to bitmap variable  using  var ms   new MemoryStream          Bitmap bmp   new Bitmap imageToConvert       bmp Save ms  format       return ms ToArray

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I ll add this cause of the error as well in hopes it helps some future internet traveler      GDI  limits the maximum height of an image to 65500  We do some basic image resizing  but in resizing we try to maintain aspect ratio   We have a QA guy who s a little too good at this job  he decided to test this with a ONE pixel wide photo that was 480 pixels tall   When the image was scaled to meet our dimensions  the height was north of 68 000 pixels and our app exploded with A generic error occurred in GDI    You can verify this yourself with test     int width   480    var height   UInt16 MaxValue - 36    succeeds at 65499  65500   try         while true              var image   new Bitmap width  height         using MemoryStream ms   new MemoryStream                      error will throw from here         image Save ms  ImageFormat Jpeg                 height    1              catch Exception ex            explodes at 65501 with  A generic error occurred in GDI          It s too bad there s not a friendly  net ArgumentException thrown in the constructor of Bitmap

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My console app got the same error message   A generic error occurred in GDI    The error happened in line newImage Save as refer to the following code   for  int i   1  i  lt   1000  i         Image newImage   Image FromFile   Sample tif            some logic here    newImage Save i     tif     ImageFormat Tiff       The program returned error when the RAM usage is around 4GB  and managed to solve it by changed the Program Target to x64 in project properties

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One other cause of this error and that solve my probl  me is that your application doesn t have a write permission on some directory   so to complete the answer of savindra   https   stackoverflow com a 7426516 6444829   Here is how you Grant File Access to IIS IUSERS  To provide access to an ASP NET application  you must grant access to the IIs IUSERS   To grant read  write  and modify permissions to a specific File or Folder   In Windows Explorer  locate and select the required file  Right click the file  and then click Properties  In the Properties dialog box  click the Security tab  On the Security tab  examine the list of users    If your application is running as a Network Service  add the network service account in the list and grant it the permission  In the Properties dialog box  click IIs IUSERS  and in the Permissions for NETWORK SERVICE section  select the Read  Write  and Modify permissions  Click Apply  and then click OK    this worked for me in my IIS of windows server 2016 and local IIS windows 10

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I had this issue on a test server but not on the live server  I was writing the image to a stream  so it wasn t a permission issue  I d been directly deploying some of the  dll s to the test server  Deploying the entire solution fixed the issue  so it was probably a weird compilation mismatch

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Another cause for this error - the path you indicate in the Save method of the Bitmap instance doesn t exist or you haven t supplied a full   valid path   Just had this error because I was passing in a filename and not a full path    It happens

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For me I was using the Image Save Stream  ImageCodecInfo  EncoderParameters  and apparently this was causing the infamous A generic error occurred in GDI  error   I was trying to use EncoderParameter to save the jpegs in 100  quality  This was working perfectly on  my machine   doh   and not on production   When I used the Image Save Stream  ImageFormat  instead  the error disappeared  So like an idiot I continued to use the latter although it saves them in default quality which I assume is just 50    Hope this info helps someone

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If you are trying to save an image to a remote location be sure to add the NETWORK SERVICE user account into the security settings and give that user read and write permissions  Otherwise it is not going to work

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Just in case if someone is doing as stupid stuff as I was  1  make sure path does exist  2  make sure you have permissions to write  3  make sure your path is correct  in my case I was missing file name in the TargetPath     it should have said  your path sucks than  A generic error occurred in GDI

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We had a similar problem on generating a PDF or resize image using ImageProcessor lib on production server    Recycle the application pool fix the issue

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OK I seem to have found the cause just by sheer luck and its nothing wrong with that particular method  it s further back up the call stack   Earlier I resize the image and as part of that method I return the resized object as follows  I have inserted two calls to the above method and a direct save to a file      At this point the new bitmap has no MimeType    Need to output to memory stream using  var m   new MemoryStream             dst Save m  format           var img   Image FromStream m             TEST        img Save  C   test jpg           var bytes   PhotoEditor ConvertImageToByteArray img            return img       It appears that the memory stream that the object was created on has to be open at the time the object is saved  I am not sure why this is  Is anyone able to enlighten me and how I can get around this    I only return from a stream because after using the resize code similar to this the destination file has an unknown mime type  img RawFormat Guid  and Id like the Mime type to be correct on all image objects as it makes it hard write generic handling code otherwise   EDIT  This didn t come up in my initial search but here s the answer from Jon Skeet

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Based on the answer from  savindra   if you RHM on your application and try and run as an administrator then it should resolve your problem     Mine seemed to be a permission issue

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I found that if one of the parent folders where I was saving the file had a trailing space then GDI  would throw the generic exception   In other words  if I tried to save to  C  Documents and Settings myusername Local Settings Temp ABC DEF M1 Trended Values  Images picture png  then it threw the generic exception   My folder name was being generated from a file name that happened to have a trailing space so it was easy to  Trim   that and move on

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You ll also get this exception if you try to save to an invalid path or if there s a permissions issue    If you re not 100  sure that the file path is available and permissions are correct then try writing a to a text file  This takes just a few seconds to rule out what would be a very simple fix   var img   System Drawing Image FromStream incomingStream       img Save path   System IO File WriteAllText path   Testing valid path  amp  permissions       And don t forget to clean up your file

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My turn   using  System Drawing Image img   Bitmap FromFile fileName               do some manipulation of img           img Save fileName  System Drawing Imaging ImageFormat Jpeg       Got it on the  Save    because the using   is holding the file open  so I can t overwrite it   Maybe this will help someone in the future

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I encountered the problem too  The problem was due to the loading stream being disposed  But I did not dispose it  it was inside  Net framework  All I had to do was use   image instance   Image FromFile file name     instead of  image instance Load file name     image instance is of type System Windows Forms PictureBox  PictureBox s Load   disposes the stream which the image was loaded from  and I did not know that

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Error occurring  because of Permission  make sure folder have ALL THE PERMISSION   public Image Base64ToImage string base64String                   Convert Base64 String to byte           byte   imageBytes   Convert FromBase64String base64String           MemoryStream ms   new MemoryStream imageBytes  0            imageBytes Length               Convert byte   to Image         ms Write imageBytes  0  imageBytes Length           Image image   Image FromStream ms  true           return image          img Save  YOUR PATH TO SAVE IMAGE

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Possible problems that cause such an error are    Directory does not exist  The method you are calling will not automatically create this directory for you  The security permissions to write to the output directory do not allow the user running the app to write   I hope this helps  this was the fix for my issue  I simply made sure that the output directory exists before saving the output image

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I also get this error because i m trying to save images with the same name of previous saved images   Make sure that you don t save images with duplicate name   Use for thar for example a  Random  function  How does C   39 s random number generator work   or for example generate a Guid  http   betterexplained com articles the-quick-guide-to-guids

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Same problem I was facing  But in my case  I was trying to save file in C drive and it was not accessible  So I tried it to save in D drive which was fully accessible and I succeeded    So first check your folders in which you are trying to save  You must have all  read and write  rights for that particular folder

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in my case  path was wrong just use this String path   Server MapPath  quot   last img png quot     Path

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I have strange solution for this problem  I was fased to this during coding  I thought that Bitmap is struct and wrap around it with method  In my imagination Bitmap will be copies inside method and returned out of method  But later I checked that it s class  and i have no idea why is it helped me  but it Works  Maybe someone have time and have fun to look at IL code of this    Not sure maybe it s working cause this method is static inside static method  I don t know          public SomeClass                       public byte    screenShotByte              public Bitmap  screenShotByte              public Bitmap ScreenShot                                 get                                       if   screenShot    null                                                 screenShotByte   ScreenShot                            using  var ms   new MemoryStream  screenShotByte                                                          screenShot    Bitmap Image FromStream ms                                                                               ImageUtils GetBitmap  screenShot  Save Path Combine AppDomain CurrentDomain BaseDirectory     quot  DateTime Now ToFileTimeUtc    png quot                                                            return ImageUtils GetBitmap  screenShot                                               public byte   ScreenShot                                        return byte array for image in my case implementedd like selenium screen shot                                  public static ImageUtils                       public static Bitmap GetBitmap Bitmap image                                return Bitmap                             p s  It s not trolling this solution solved problem of  keep using bitmap after saving in another places

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If you are getting that error   then I can say that your application doesn t have a write permission on some directory   For example  if you are trying to save the Image from the memory stream to the file system   you may get that error   Please if you are using XP  make sure to add write permission for the aspnet account on that folder   If you are using windows server  2003 2008  or Vista  make sure that add write permission for the Network service account   Hope it help some one

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I notice that your  jpeg  case is actually               default                  format   ImageFormat Jpeg                  break    Are you sure that the format is jpeg and not something else   I d try               case  image jpg      or  image jpeg                    format   ImageFormat Jpeg                  break    Or check what imageToConvert MimeType   is actually returning   UPDATE  Is there any other initialisation you need to do to the MemoryStream object

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I also got this error when saving JPEGs  but only for certain images   My final code     try         img SaveJpeg tmpFile  quality      This is always successful for say image1 jpg  but always throws the GDI  exception for image2 jpg       catch  Exception ex             Try HU s method  Convert it to a Bitmap first     img   new Bitmap img        img SaveJpeg tmpFile  quality      This is always successful       I didn t create the images so I can t tell what the difference is  I d appreciate if anyone could explain that   This is my SaveJpeg function just FYI   private static void SaveJpeg this Image img  string filename  int quality      EncoderParameter qualityParam   new EncoderParameter Encoder Quality   long quality     ImageCodecInfo jpegCodec   GetEncoderInfo  image jpeg      EncoderParameters encoderParams   new EncoderParameters 1     encoderParams Param 0    qualityParam    img Save filename  jpegCodec  encoderParams      private static ImageCodecInfo GetEncoderInfo string mimeType        var encoders   ImageCodecInfo GetImageEncoders        var encoder   encoders SingleOrDefault c   gt  string Equals c MimeType  mimeType  StringComparison InvariantCultureIgnoreCase        if  encoder    null  throw new Exception   Encoder not found for mime type  mimeType         return encoder

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if your code is as follows then also this error occurs  private Image GetImage byte   byteArray       using  var stream   new MemoryStream byteArray               return Image FromStream stream             The correct one is   private Image GetImage byte   byteArray       var stream   new MemoryStream byteArray      return Image FromStream stream               This may be because we are returning from the using block

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SOLVED - I had this exact problem   The fix  for me  was to up the disk quota for IUSR on the IIS server   In this instance  we have a catalog app with images of items and such   The upload quota for the  Anonymous Web User  was set to 100MB  which is the default for this particular hosting company s IIS servers   I upped it to 400MB and was able to upload images without error   This might not be your issue  but if it is  it s an easy fix

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This is an expansion   qualification of Fred s response which stated   GDI limits the height of an image to 65534   We ran into this issue with one of our  NET applications  and having seen the post  our outsourcing team raised their hands in the air and said they couldn t fix the problem without major changes   Based on my testing  it s possible to create   manipulate images with a height larger than 65534  but the issue arises when saving to a stream or file IN CERTAIN FORMATS  In the following code  the t Save   method call throws our friend the generic exception when the pixel height is 65501 for me  For reasons of curiosity  I repeated the test for width  and the same limit applied to saving       for  int i   65498  i  lt   100000  i                  using  Bitmap t   new Bitmap 800  i           using  Graphics gBmp   Graphics FromImage t                         Color green   Color FromArgb 0x40  0  0xff  0               using  Brush greenBrush   new SolidBrush green                                    draw a green rectangle to the bitmap in memory                 gBmp FillRectangle greenBrush  0  0  799  i                   if  File Exists  c   temp  i jpg                                          File Delete  c   temp  i jpg                                      t Save  c   temp  i jpg   ImageFormat Jpeg                                   GC Collect            The same error also occurs if you write to a memory stream    To get round it  you can repeat the above code and substitute ImageFormat Tiff or ImageFormat Bmp for ImageFormat Jpeg    This runs up to heights   widths of 100 000 for me - I didn t test the limits  As it happens  Tiff was a viable option for us   BE WARNED  The in memory TIFF streams   files consume more memory than their JPG counterparts

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Simple  create a new instance of Bitmap solves the problem   string imagePath   Path Combine Environment CurrentDirectory    Bhatti i  png    Bitmap bitmap   new Bitmap image   bitmap Save imagePath

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Just to throw another possible solution on the pile  I ll mention the case I ran into with this error message   The method Bitmap Save would throw this exception when saving an bitmap I had transformed and was displaying   I discovered it would not throw the exception if the statement had a breakpoint on it  nor would it if the Bitmap Save was preceeded by Thread Sleep 500  so I suppose there is some sort of resource contention going on   Simply copying the image to a new Bitmap object was enough to prevent this exception from appearing   new Bitmap oldbitmap  Save filename

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byte   bts    byte   page1 EnhMetaFileBits   using  var ms   new MemoryStream bts           var image   System Drawing Image FromStream ms        System Drawing Image img   image GetThumbnailImage 200  260  null  IntPtr Zero             img Save NewPath  System Drawing Imaging ImageFormat Png

[c#] A generic error occurred in GDI+, JPEG Image to MemoryStream

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