Hey guys!

I've looked through nearly all image related posts and not found an answer yet.

I'm trying to write an application, and in it, I want to load images from a selected directory and make them into objects that I will later display on screen in different layouts. The layout will range from displaying at least 1 and possibly up to, let's say, 10 images at once -- allowing the user to scroll through and see all the images loaded.

So far, I've tried making the loaded images into QPixmap objects, QImage objects, and QGraphicsPixmapItem objects. However, my problem lies in the fact that the loading is too slow! The test folder I'm using contains 110 images (52 mb of formats .bmp, .gif, .jpg/.jpeg, .png) and it takes 17 seconds to load them all into QPixmap objects, and 12 seconds to load them into QImage objects. That is just not practical for the purpose of my application since I want to be able to load ~1000 images in a few seconds. I've tried loading a folder with 1100 images and it took a bit over 2 minutes.

My question is, is Qt unable to load 1000 images any faster? Do I need to use any other objects, other libs? It's not impossible obviously. 'FastStone Image Viewer' is able to load my entire 1100 image folder in ~5 seconds, granted they are in thumbnail view to begin with, but that's exactly what I'm looking for.

Someone mentioned using QImageReader and load them scaled down, would that be faster?

Any info would help: explanations, sample code or links, I don't mind reading - not looking to be spoon-fed, just haven't found anything.

Thanks in advance!