Image vs BitmapImage vs Bitmap

Question

I was wondering what the difference is between Image, Bitmap and BitmapImage in WPF & C#.

Can someone help me out?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/946926/image-vs-bitmap-class may be of some help — Prisoner, Dec 07 '11 at 16:20
This has already been answered but this link may also be helpful: http://stackoverflow.com/a/16080211/1319753 — Nii Laryea, Jul 16 '13 at 16:10

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

17

Image is a base abstract class representing images in GDI+. Bitmap is a concrete implementation of this base class.

BitmapImage is a way to represent an image in a vector based GUI engine like WPF and Silverlight. Contrary to a Bitmap, it is not based on GDI+. It is based on the Windows Imaging Component.

There are ways to load a BitmapImage from a Bitmap.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Community

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answered Dec 07 '11 at 16:25

Darin Dimitrov

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What would be the best for simply reading some pixel data from a PNG - GDI+ or Imaging way? – AgentFire Dec 08 '17 at 00:11
@DarinDimitrov, Windows Imaging Component URL is no longer a valid URL. I think you need to update it. – Arsen Khachaturyan Sep 08 '20 at 12:13

Mark · Answer 2 · 2015-07-16T02:09:39.947

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WinForms/GDI+ uses the abstract class System.Drawing.Image and its implementation Bitmap.

WPF uses the abstract class System.Windows.Media.ImageSource (and BitmapSource) and its implementation BitmapImage.

WPF also has a control named Image, which is a FrameworkElement that contains and displays an ImageSource.

It took me a while to untangle that mess of terminology...

edited Jul 16 '15 at 02:09

answered Jul 16 '15 at 01:59

Mark

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I am very new to all these topics - C#, WPF, and WinForms. It is my understanding that WPF is potentially faster than WinForms because it accesses hardware for rendering, whereas WinForms uses GDI/GDI+. When using WPF, as long as you are using the FrameworkElement version of the Image class, it should be hardware accelerated, correct? Whereas if you were to use the System.Drawing.Image class within WPF, it would be GDI/GDI+? I had been trying to avoid the Image class in WPF because I thought it was all GDI/GDI+, not realizing that WPF had it's own Image class that was, I assume, faster? – user613832 May 02 '23 at 17:26

Image vs BitmapImage vs Bitmap

2 Answers2