Does BitmapData.dispose() remove memory occupied by its Bitmap

[laaptu]

Hi there,
This is my scenario
1: I upload an image
2: Without altering it,I make a copy of it and use it display to users in resized format
note: I won't display the original image.
3:Now when user deletes the resized image,i need to delete the image loaded as bitmap i.e. the original image which i won't be displaying

For that I used bitmap.bitmapData.dispose() method.But,it doesn't free up the memory taken by the bitmap.
For instance at initial state the memory usage is 58 Mb and upon loading 3 images the size increases to 87 Mb.
And when I delete all the images the size decreases to 81 MB only.
So,I feel the loaded bitmap is not completely removed.
Any idea what should I do

[Cinema]

Are you trying to get rid of or recycle the bitmapdata? Because what's happening is it's clearing out the bitmapdata. The bitmapdata object inside the bitmap object is still there it's just cleared.

[laaptu]

Hi Cinema,
I am trying to completely remove the bitmap from my application or to say from memory.

P.S.: My application is online tshirt customizer where user is able to upload his/her image.
-> A clone of uploaded image is made
->This cloned image undergoes scaling and cloned image is seen by the user
->I have added original image in this format loader.content as Bitmap
->And I need to free the memory occupied by this original image

[Cinema]

To get rid of the bitmap object you are to have to make it unreachable* by removing all references to it; set the variable to null - if that is the only reference. Then you wait for garbage collection to remove it. However it's better to recycle frequently used objects than wait for them to be destroyed.

*Manually memory management, like destructors found in C/C++, aren't in scripting language likes AS3, at least where we can use it. You have to deal with automatic memory management or ubiquitously know as garbage collection.

[laaptu]

While going through Garbage collector in Actionscript 3,I came across an article at

http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/09...pt-3-with-air/

And using this method ,I was able to free the memory significantly.
For instance
->Initial memory taken by my app was 58 Mb
->On addition of 3 images the memory size went to 87 Mb
->And using above process along with bitmapData.dispose() ,when I removed the 3 images the size went down to 70 Mb

Though I couldn't go back to range of 58 Mb, I could get significant memory in comparison to my previous implementation

[Cinema]

How exactly did you do it, I'm very curious.

[laaptu]

First of all my simple method

bitmap.bitmapData.dispose();
bitmap =null;

Then running the code described in this webpage

http://www.craftymind.com/2008/04/09...pt-3-with-air/

[Cinema]

Thanks for the share glad everything worked out for you, except for the 12MB lost somewhere.

[laaptu]

I will be still chasing that 12 Mb and if anything comes noteworthy I will surely post it here

[laaptu]

To all,
System.gc()

works only on Flash Player debugger version and on AIR app.
So forcing garbage collector is restricted for flash player standalone version.