Loading images in List as ImageIcon causes OutOfMemoryError.

Question

I am trying to figure out why the bit of code below is causing such a memory problem. I have the JRE starting up with 256MB of ram (got 2GB on system). I am loading 200K images at most, and after 3 or so images, I am getting lots of OutOfMemory exceptions. Any ideas?
List images = new ArrayList(50);
File[] files = f.listFiles(new FileFilter() {
                    public boolean accept(File fi) {
                         // Only allow .gif, .png, .jpg and .jpeg
                         String ext = fi.getName().toLowerCase();
                         if (fi.isFile() && (ext.indexOf(".png") > 0)
                                   || (ext.indexOf(".gif") > 0)
                                   || (ext.indexOf(".jpg") > 0)
                                   || (ext.indexOf(".jpeg") > 0)) {
                              return true;
                         return false;
               if (null != files && files.length > 0) {
                    for (int cntr = 0; cntr < files.length; cntr++) {
                         try {
                              File fil = (File) files[cntr];
                              System.out.println("Loading " + fil.getAbsolutePath());
                              ImageIcon ii = new ImageIcon(fil.getAbsolutePath());
                              images.add(ii);
                         } catch (Throwable e) {
                              // ignore any per file to image translation errors.
                              e.printStackTrace(System.out);
               }

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply. However, my situation is a little different. I preload up to 100 images first, then rapidly display them on screen like a lottery number. After loading the first 200K image, I get an OutOfMemoryError which is VERY odd to me. I originaly was loading 2MB images and resizing them to smaller size using BufferedImage and such. But that was giving me the problems. So I set Xmx256M, and resized the images in photoshop, and STILL I get memory problems and the app wont run. It is very odd. It's as if anything larger than 64K images can't be loaded using ImageIcon. But I know I've loaded them before as well.
So I guess the thing is, what is the right way to load many images into memory. Maybe ImageIcon is not the right way.