The dispose of an OpenFileDialog in C#?

Question

I have searched throughout entire Stack Overflow, but I couldn't find an answer to the following:

When I'm using my OpenFileDialog, the files I open get blocked for use out of my program until I close my program. So if I open an image, I am not allowed to replace that image in my Windows Explorer anymore.

I think this is a problem with disposing my OpenFileDialog, but I'm not sure how to solve it...

My code:

using (OpenFileDialog ofd = new OpenFileDialog())
{
    ofd.Title = "Open Image";
    ofd.Filter = "PNG Image(*.png|*.png" +
                 "|GIF Image(*.gif|*.gif" +
                 "|Bitmap Image(*.bmp|*.bmp" +
                 "|JPEG Compressed Image (*.jpg|*.jpg";

    if (ofd.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)
    {
        pictureBox1.Image = new Bitmap(ofd.FileName);
    }
}

I thought that the using block would solve this problem, but nope... It still gets used by the program. I want to load the image in the picturebox and then I want the image to be available again (so I can rename it, replace it, etc...).

Answer 1

As written by Chris, try something like:

pictureBox1.Image = Image.FromStream(new MemoryStream(File.ReadAllBytes(old.FileName)));

It reads all the file with File.ReadAllBytes, put it in a MemoryStream and pass the MemoryStream to the Image static initializer.

Equivalent to:

byte[] bytes = File.ReadAllBytes(old.FileName);
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(bytes);
pictureBox1.Image = Image.FromStream(ms);

You mustn't dispose the MemoryStream! If/when the Image will be disposed, the finalizer of MemoryStream will kick in (if you don't have other references to ms) and the MemoryStream will be disposed (note that this isn't something that will happen immediately... It's something that will happen when the GC will run)