I'll come back to questions 1 & 2, requires some revision/research on my part...and I will have to dig out an old device that uses the shared storage file path.
We should now understand how the ImagePicker works. When you make an image selection from the "gallery" with ImagePicker, it makes a copy of the file to shared storage (earlier android versions) or to the ASD (later android versions), and gives it a different file name. You can store up to 10 images in this way, try to store an 11th, and the 1st image will be removed. If you want to work on the imagePicker image, any modifications will be made to that copy, not the original.
An alternative to this, and to overcome the 10 image limit, or to work directly with the picked file, you can use the activityStarter. This is covered many times on the community, but I can show you how.
-
Yes, this provides a valid absolute path to the copied file. You may wish to store the value/filepath to a variable though, and use that instead.
-
As you can see from the above, yes, the imagePicker makes a copy, and your blocks are working on that copy, not the original image, which will remain untouched.
Much may depend on what you intend to do with the modified image file...