Poor image resolution of ImageList Images in C# | Poor image quality in ListView C#

Poor Image Resolution of C# ImageList Images: If you ever used an ImageList for setting image icons to individual nodes of .Net controls like Treeview, List view etc, you might have noticed the deteriorated quality of the image when it is taken from the ImageList even if the size of the image remains same.

ImageList is a container of image data. ImageList control is not directly visible in the User Interface. ImageList is referenced from other controls such as TreeView, ListView, Toolbar, Tabstrip. These controls access the images from ImageList the by index values.

ImageList control is used as a single repository of images to save the development time by enabling the developer to write code which refers to a single catalog of images rather than using the LoadPicture function to load icons or bitmaps.

But the major Issue here is that the quality of the image from the ImageList is not same as the quality before the image was added to ImageList.

The first solution is to use the image directly without an ImageList. But the normal efficient coding practice is to insert the image to an ImageList and then use images from the ImageList. This will end up in images with reduced clarity/resolution from ImageList.

.NET controls like TreeView control normally requires an ImageList with lots of images to set image icons to each node of the tree control. In here, poor resolution of image icons is a noticeable issue.

There can be various solutions for this problem. But the easiest is to change the ColorDepth property of the corresponding source ImagesList control you are using for your controls like Treeview and Listview.

Select the ImageList > Go To Properties Window > set the ColorDepth property of image from Property window to Depth32Bit.

Otherwise, if your ImageList control is programmatically added to the form then use the below code line to set the color depth.

imageList.ColorDepth = ColorDepth.Depth32Bit;

Color depth is the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel in a bit-mapped image.

There is no 64-bit color choice for 64 bit system.32 bit depth will work for 32-bit system and also for 64-bit system.

Also remember, re-sizing the image will definitely deteriorate the image quality.

Summary

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