CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netimagewinformscapture
user34787
user34787

Reputation: 343

How to get a screen capture of a .Net WinForms control programmatically?

How do you programmatically obtain a picture of a .Net control?

Upvotes: 32

Views: 27074

Answers (7)

Hallgrim
Hallgrim

Reputation: 15503

Control.DrawToBitmap will let you draw most controls to a bitmap. This does not work with RichTextBox and some others.

If you want to capture these, or a control that has one of them, then you need to do PInvoke like described in this CodeProject article: Image Capture

Take care that some of these methods will capture whatever is on the screen, so if you have another window covering your control you will get that instead.

Upvotes: 5

Mark Lakata
Mark Lakata

Reputation: 20818

This is how to do it for an entire Form, not just the Client area (which doesn't have the title bar and other dressing)

        Rectangle r = this.Bounds;
        r.Offset(-r.X,-r.Y);
        Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(r.Width,r.Height);
        this.DrawToBitmap(bitmap, r);
        Clipboard.SetImage(bitmap);

Upvotes: 3

Joey
Joey

Reputation: 2951

You can get a picture of a .NET control programmatically pretty easily using the DrawToBitmap method of the Control class starting in .NET 2.0

Here is a sample in VB

    Dim formImage As New Bitmap("C:\File.bmp")
    Me.DrawToBitmap(formImage, Me.Bounds)

And here it is in C#:

 Bitmap formImage = New Bitmap("C:\File.bmp")
 this.DrawToBitmap(formImage, this.Bounds)

Upvotes: 7

R Muruganandhan
R Muruganandhan

Reputation: 21

Panel1.Dock = DockStyle.None ' If Panel Dockstyle is in Fill mode
Panel1.Width = 5000  ' Original Size without scrollbar
Panel1.Height = 5000 ' Original Size without scrollbar

Dim bmp As New Bitmap(Me.Panel1.Width, Me.Panel1.Height)
Me.Panel1.DrawToBitmap(bmp, New Rectangle(0, 0, Me.Panel1.Width, Me.Panel1.Height))
'Me.Panel1.DrawToBitmap(bmp, Panel1.ClientRectangle)
bmp.Save("C:\panel.jpg", System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg)

Panel1.Dock = DockStyle.Fill

Note: Its working fine

Upvotes: 1

Nick
Nick

Reputation: 9183

if it's not on the control you're trying to do, you can usually cast it to the base Control class and call the DrawToBitmap method there.

Upvotes: 1

Alan
Alan

Reputation: 6669

For WinForms controls that support it, there is a method in the System.Windows.Forms.Control class:

public void DrawToBitmap(Bitmap bitmap, Rectangle targetBounds);

This does not work with all controls, however. Third party component vendors have more comprehensive solutions.

Upvotes: 3

user1228
user1228

Reputation:

There's a method on every control called DrawToBitmap. You don't need to p/invoke to do this.

Control c = new TextBox();
System.Drawing.Bitmap bmp = new System.Drawing.Bitmap(c.Width, c.Height);
c.DrawToBitmap(bmp, c.ClientRectangle);

Upvotes: 48

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