Android Picasso
Introduction
Picasso is a library for managing images on Android and is very simple to use
Picasso.with(getContext()).load(sampleURI).into(imageView)
Picasso Provides
- Flexible Source Locations
- Caching
- Image Trnasformations
- Error Handling
- Logging
- Request Management
To add it to our projects we simply add it to the gradle. At the time this was
implementation 'com.squareup.picasso:picasso:2.71828'
Resources for this can be found at
https://github.com/alex-wolf-ps/android-picasso
Comparison
Here are some comparisons on the competition at the time, Glide and Fresco. I guess I am more interested in the items to compare as this points to the problem people are trying to solve.
| Criterion |  |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Size | 121 Kb/td> | 440 Kb | 500 kb |
| Convenience of use | high | high | middle |
| Web Download Speed | high | slightly lower due to lengthy caching processing | high |
| Cache Download Speed | average | high | high |
| Built-in Transformation Features | basic set of operations | basic set plus rounding | wide range of transformation capabilities, but with limitations |
| Additional tools | Absent. | Loading a frame from video as a picture and GIF, using any type of model, a flexible API with the ability to connect any network stack. | Saving images not in Java Heap, but in ashmem heap, the ability to crop images around any point, resize JPEG using native resources, support for Progressive JPEG images. |
Loading Images
Sources
Picasso supports loading images from either
- String, "https:://www.bibble.co.nz/myimage.png
- Resource ID, images stored in the app drawable e.g. R.drawable.myimage
- URI, Maybe an image from the phone using an intent
- File, a Android File Object
File Types
Picasso supports many file types include JPEG, PNG and SVG. JPEG and PNG are raster images and SVGs are vector Images.
