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. Vector images are stored as a series of paths curves and points. Where as raster images of pixels which makes them less unable to scale
