Base64String in Windows 8 - windows

Question

I've got a windows 8 program that uses an image picker and downloads the selected image on the server.
The server provides an API which needs the image to be converted in base64string. And an image must be less than 7Mb.
I'm using the code below:
FileOpenPicker openPicker = new FileOpenPicker();
openPicker.ViewMode = PickerViewMode.Thumbnail;
openPicker.SuggestedStartLocation = PickerLocationId.PicturesLibrary;
openPicker.FileTypeFilter.Add(".jpg");
openPicker.FileTypeFilter.Add(".jpeg");
openPicker.FileTypeFilter.Add(".png");
StorageFile file = await openPicker.PickSingleFileAsync();
if (file != null)
{
// Application now has read/write access to the picked file
bitmap = new BitmapImage();
byte[] buf;
using (var stream = await file.OpenStreamForReadAsync())
{
buf = ReadToEnd(stream);
}
using (var stream = await file.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.Read))
{
base64String = Convert.ToBase64String(buf);
bitmap.SetSource(stream);
}
}
And the bitmap goes to the server.
But there is a problem: the bitmap size is much more bigger than jpg's size, for example. And none of small jpgs go to the server, because their bitmap version is larger than 7 Mb.
Can I convert an image to base64string without converting it to a bitmap?

Answer 1

In this code, you read the image (encoded in jpeg) and convert it to a base 64 string.
You can not reduce the size of the base 64 without reducing the size of the image.
To do so, you can use a BitmapEncoder/Decoder and resize the image to a smaller size.
Regards