[android] Picasso v/s Imageloader v/s Fresco vs Glide

Findings:

1. Difference between Picasso v/s ImageLoader here ...
2. Info about the library GLIDE here ...
3. Now recently Facebook released new image library called Fresco

Questions:

1. What is the difference between Picasso v/s Imageloader v/s Fresco
2. When can we use Glide
3. Which is the best library to use.
4. If each library has its own significance, what are they ?

I am one of the engineers on the Fresco project. So obviously I'm biased.

But you don't have to take my word for it. We've released a sample app that allows you to compare the performance of five libraries - Fresco, Picasso, UIL, Glide, and Volley Image Loader - side by side. You can get it at our GitHub repo.

I should also point out that Fresco is available on Maven Central, as com.facebook.fresco:fresco.

Fresco offers features that Picasso, UIL, and Glide do not yet have:

1. Images aren't stored in the Java heap, but in the ashmem heap. Intermediate byte buffers are also stored in the native heap. This leaves a lot more memory available for applications to use. It reduces the risk of OutOfMemoryErrors. It also reduces the amount of garbage collection apps have to do, leading to better performance.
2. Progressive JPEG images can be streamed, just like in a web browser.
3. Images can be cropped around any point, not just the center.
4. JPEG images can be resized natively. This avoids the problem of OOMing while trying to downsize an image.

There are many others (see our documentation), but these are the most important.

I want to share with you a benchmark I have done among Picasso, Universal Image Loader and Glide: https://bit.ly/1kQs3QN

Fresco was out of the benchmark because for the project I was running the test, we didn't want to refactor our layouts (because of the Drawee view).

What I recommend is Universal Image Loader because of its customization, memory consumption and balance between size and methods.

If you have a small project, I would go for Glide (or give Fresco a try).

Mind you that this is a highly opinion based question, so I stopped making fjords and made a quick table

Now library comparison is hard because on many parameters, all the four pretty much do the same thing, except possibly for Fresco because there is a whole bunch of new memory level optimizations in it.So let me know if certain parameters you'd like to see a comparison for based on my experience.

Having used Fresco the least, the answer might evolve as I continue to use and understand it for current exploits. The used personally is having used the library atleast once in a completed app.

*Note - Fresco now supports GIF as well as WebP animations

Neither Glide nor Picasso is perfect. The way Glide loads an image to memory and do the caching is better than Picasso which let an image loaded far faster. In addition, it also helps preventing an app from popular OutOfMemoryError. GIF Animation loading is a killing feature provided by Glide. Anyway Picasso decodes an image with better quality than Glide.

Which one do I prefer? Although I use Picasso for such a very long time, I must admit that I now prefer Glide. But I would recommend you to change Bitmap Format to ARGB_8888 and let Glide cache both full-size image and resized one first. The rest would do your job great!

• Method count of Picasso and Glide are at 840 and 2678 respectively.
• Picasso (v2.5.1)'s size is around 118KB while Glide (v3.5.2)'s is around 430KB.
• Glide creates cached images per size while Picasso saves the full image and process it, so on load it shows faster with Glide but uses more memory.
• Glide use less memory by default with RGB_565.

+1 For Picasso Palette Helper.

There is a post that talk a lot about Picasso vs Glide post

Fresco sources | off site
(-)

• Huge size of library
  
• No Callback with View, Bitmap parameters
  
• SimpleDraweeView doesn't support wrap_content
  
• Huge size of cache
  (+)
  
• Pretty fast image loader (for small && medium images)
  
• A lot of functionality(streaming, drawing tools, memory management, etc)
  
• Possibility to setup directly in xml (for example round corners)
  
• GIF support
  
• WebP and Animated Webp support
  

Picasso sources | off site
(-)

• Slow loading big images from internet into ListView
  (+)
  
• Tinny size of library
  
• Small size of cache
  
• Simple to use
  
• UI does not freeze
  
• WebP support
  

Glide sources

(-)

• Big size of library
  (+)
  
• Tinny size of cache
  
• Simple to use
  
• GIF support
  
• WebP support
  
• Fast loading big images from internet into ListView
  
• UI does not freeze
  
• BitmapPool to re-use memory and thus lesser GC events

Universal Image Loader sources

(-)

• Limited functionality (limited image processing)
  
• Project support has stopped since 27.11.2015
  (+)
  
• Tinny size of library
  
• Simple to use
  

Tested by me on SGS2 (Android 4.1) (WiFi 8.43 Mbps)
Official versions for Java, not for Xamarin!
October 19 2015

I prefer to use Glide.
Read more here.
How to write cache to External Storage (SD Card) with Glide.

These answers are totally my opinion

Answers

1. Picasso is an easy to use image loader, same goes for Imageloader. Fresco uses a different approach to image loading, i haven't used it yet but it looks too me more like a solution for getting image from network and caching them then showing the images. then the other way around like Picasso/Imageloader/Glide which to me are more Showing image on screen that also does getting images from network and caching them.

2. Glide tries to be somewhat interchangeable with Picasso.I think when they were created Picasso's mind set was follow HTTP spec's and let the server decide the caching policies and cache full sized and resize on demand. Glide is the same with following the HTTP spec but tries to have a smaller memory footprint by making some different assumptions like cache the resized images instead of the fullsized images, and show images with RGB_565 instead of RGB_8888. Both libraries offer full customization of the default settings.

3. As to which library is the best to use is really hard to say. Picasso, Glide and Imageloader are well respected and well tested libraries which all are easy to use with the default settings. Both Picasso and Glide require only 1 line of code to load an image and have a placeholder and error image. Customizing the behaviour also doesn't require that much work. Same goes for Imageloader which is also an older library then Picasso and Glide, however I haven't used it so can't say much about performance/memory usage/customizations but looking at the readme on github gives me the impression that it is also relatively easy to use and setup. So in choosing any of these 3 libraries you can't make the wrong decision, its more a matter of personal taste. For fresco my opinion is that its another facebook library so we have to see how that is going to work out for them, so far there track record isn't that good. Like the facebook SDK is still isn't officially released on mavenCentral I have not used to facebook sdk since sept 2014 and it seems they have put the first version online on mavenCentral in oct 2014. So it will take some time before we can get any good opinion about it.

4. between the 3 big name libraries I think there are no significant differences. The only one that stand out is fresco but that is because it has a different approach and is new and not battle tested.