Develop Reference

Rectangle Selection Like Tool MS Paint C#

I have been working on creating a program similar to MS Paint. I have several of the features it has down but the one which is currently giving me trouble is the rectangular selection tool. My program currently draws everything on the panel and saves it all in an ArrayList so each shape can be redrawn in Paint().
Like MS paint I would like the user to be able to select a section of the drawing on the panel and either copy it, move it, re-size it, or even delete it. I was thinking about having the user draw a rectangle & saving the information for it. Then taking that information for the rectangle, passing them to create a new Bitmap. I would then paint a new rectangle in the background color to give the appearance that the selected area was "removed" when the selected portion is moved. It sounded okay until I realized that I couldn't use the Graphics.FromImage() on the PaintEventArgs variable passed to Paint() which made my idea useless. Not sure if that makes sense so my apologies if it's a confusing mess.
I've been searching the internet for some assistance and I haven't found much to help so either this is very easy to do, very difficult, or "rectangle selection tool" is not the proper term. Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated!!! Thank you for your time! :)

I understand that you actually have the Rectangle and now would like to copy an area from your painted Panel.
This is possible, assuming you have, as you should, placed all the painting in the Paint event of the Panel.
Then you can, use DrawToBitmap to ask the Panel to draw itself onto a new Bitmap; from there you can DrawImage the Rectangle onto your Panel.
Note: For this to integrate with your list of 'Paint-Actions' you will have to either now store that Bitmap or store the Rectangle and redo the whole operation.
using (Graphics G = panelCanvas.CreateGraphics() )
{
Rectangle R0 = new Rectangle(22,22,55,55); // your Rectangle!
using (Bitmap bmp = new
Bitmap(panelCanvas.ClientSize.Width, panelCanvas.ClientSize.Height))
{ panelCanvas.DrawToBitmap(bmp, panelCanvas.ClientRectangle);
G.DrawImage(bmp, 111f, 111f, R0, GraphicsUnit.Pixel);
}
}
Aside: Please do replace the ArrayList, which is depracated by the new List<T>, e.g. a List<PaintAction> or whatever name your class has!
If you simply want to extract a rectanglular area from the Panel Control you can use thsi function:
public Bitmap getAreaFrom(Control ctl, Rectangle area)
{
Bitmap bmp2 = new Bitmap(area.Width, area.Height);
using (Graphics G = ctl.CreateGraphics())
using (Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(ctl.ClientSize.Width, ctl.ClientSize.Height))
{
ctl.DrawToBitmap(bmp, ctl.ClientRectangle);
using (Graphics G2 = Graphics.FromImage(bmp2))
G2.DrawImage(bmp, 0f, 0f, area, GraphicsUnit.Pixel);
}
return bmp2;
}

How to zoom an image in&out in C#?

I want to implement zoom for an image. I don't want to resize the PictureBox, but the image itself.
How do I do this?

One solution is:
Create new image of the desired size (for example 200% or 50% of original image size)
Draw original image to new image using Graphics.DrawImage(Image, Rectangle);, which draws the given image to the new image at the given position with the given size
Set new image as source for the PictureBox
Another way is to simple create a new bitmap instance like that:
Size newSize = new Size((int)(originalBitmap.Width * zoomFactor), (int)(originalBitmap.Height * zoomFactor));
Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(originalBitmap, newSize);

I used a web browser to achieve this.
//loads the image
myWebBrowser.Navigate(#"C:\myimage.png");
From there I used SendKeys to zoom in and out
myWebBrowser.Select(); //Selects browser.
SendKeys.Send("^{+}"); //Sends the control + key combo, causing the browser to zoom in. Replace the "+" with a "-" to zoom out.
It's a bit of a weird method, but it worked really well for me. I hope you find this helpful!

C# - Drawing top image over background image (alpha channel) - WinForm

I've got this topimage with alpha channel in it and I need to put this image over another background image, while the alpha channel from the top image stays intact obviously.
Now I've seen some tutorials with Canvas, but my project doesn't seem to recognize Canvas.
Anyone got an idea why I cant use Canvas or how to put those 2 images over each other?

Ok, I will try to answer: after loading the image, like this more or less, pseudocode:
Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap("MyCooolSemiTransparentImage.png");
bmp.MakeTransparent(colorHaveToBeRenderedTransparent);
colorHaveToBeRenderedTransparent is a color wich results non transparent after loading it into Bitmap object.
EDIT
if alphachannel is ok, here is a simple tutorial how to draw in image on WinForms:
msdn: DrawImage
Call method provided in yuor forms OnPaint override and you will get what you want.
Hope this helps.
Regards.

C# Winform Image zoom with pixelate

I'm making simple image editor by C# winform.
I'm trouble with make zoom function. in other similar questions, many people simply suggest that 'change the size' such like..
Bitmap newImg = new Bitmap(oldImg, newWidth, newHeight);
But In this way, the picture become blured(is it caused by antialiasing? I don't know well...) I need pixelated zoom Image. Like any other image editor such as Photoshop or paint.net...
I tried also put pixelate function to make mosaic image. result was good but it was too slow!
please help me. How can I make pixelate zoom?

Check out Image resizing in .Net with Antialiasing, this should get you started (I'm not sure but setting SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.None means no anitaliasing).

C# drawing in layers

I have an idea and maybe you guys can give me a good start or an idea in which path might be correct.
I have a picturebox right now loading a specific bmp file. What I want to do is load this bmp file into the picturebox and then load another picture on top of it. The kicker to this all is the 2nd picture must be drawn. The 2nd picture is just a fill in black box. This black box must also overlay on the first image exactly right, the black box has cordinates from paint on it (yes we have the # of the cordaints).
Still think the picturebox is the way to go, or is there a way to load paint into this, and then paint on top of the paint image?
1) Need to load an image
2) Need to read a specific file that has cords
3) Need to draw a black rectangle that matches those coords (Those cords were created in paint).
What do you think the best way to approach this is? A Picture box with code to draw in the cords of the redacted image

Here's a code sample that should do what you're after:
//Load in an image
pbTest.Image = Image.FromFile("c:\\Chrysanthemum.jpg");
//Create the graphics surface to draw on
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(pbTest.Image))
{
using (SolidBrush brush = new SolidBrush(Color.Black))
{
//Draw a black rectangle at some coordinates
g.FillRectangle(brush, new Rectangle(0, 0, 20, 10));
//Or alternatively, given some points
//I'm manually creating the array here to prove the point, you'll want to create your array from your datasource.
Point[] somePoints = new Point[] { new Point(1,1), new Point(20,25), new Point(35, 50), new Point(90, 100) };
g.FillPolygon(brush, somePoints);
}
}
The finished article:

This answer is written to apply to both web and non-web uses of C# (why I did not give specific examples.)
GDI and other graphics libs all have functions that will paint a filled rectangle on top of an image. This is the way to go. If you use two images there is a good chance for a standard user and a great chance for a hacker they will be able to view just the original image, exposing the information you are trying to hide.
If you only send an image with the areas redacted, you will never have to worry about them being seen.