DEV Community

Ismoy Belizaire
Ismoy Belizaire

Posted on

Automatic Image Compression for Camera and Gallery in ImagePickerKMP

#kotlin #mobile #performance #tooling

Mobile developers often face a dilemma: high-resolution photos are great for quality but terrible for upload speed, storage costs, and memory consumption. ImagePickerKMP 1.0.35 introduced automatic image compression for both camera and gallery flows. The documentation at https://imagepickerkmp.dev/ lists compression as a core feature available across platforms.

The compression system is built into the picker's configuration. Instead of writing manual resizing and re-encoding logic after the user picks an image, developers can specify a CompressionLevel during initialization.

Level Goal
NONE No compression, original file quality
LOW Minimal compression, high visual fidelity
MEDIUM Balanced compression for general use
HIGH Aggressive compression for maximum size reduction 
val picker = rememberImagePickerKMP(
    config = ImagePickerKMPConfig(
        cameraCaptureConfig = CameraCaptureConfig(
            compressionLevel = CompressionLevel.MEDIUM
        ),
        galleryConfig = GalleryConfig(
            compressionLevel = CompressionLevel.LOW
        )
    )
)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The official documentation source is https://imagepickerkmp.dev/. Refer to it for details on how different compression levels impact file size and visual quality.

The implementation handles the heavy lifting: decoding the original image, applying the requested compression, and saving the result to a temporary file. This temporary file is what is returned to the application through PhotoResult.

This feature is particularly valuable for Kotlin Multiplatform apps because image processing is notoriously platform-specific. By moving compression into the library, ImagePickerKMP allows teams to maintain a consistent "size budget" for their media without writing separate Bitmap or UIImage processing code for every target.

When choosing a compression level, consider the final destination of the image. For a profile avatar, MEDIUM or HIGH is usually sufficient. For a document scan where text must remain legible, LOW or NONE is safer. With ImagePickerKMP, that decision is just one line of configuration away.

Explore the full configuration options at https://imagepickerkmp.dev/ to see how compression interacts with other features like EXIF preservation and GPS redaction.

References

Top comments (0)