If I use TextRenderer.DrawText() using the Graphics object provided in the OnPaintBackground my text looks perfect. If I create my own Bitmap and use the Graphics object obtained from my Bitmap my text looks terrible. It looks like it is anti-aliasing the text using black, not the bitmap's background color. I can avoid this problem if I use Graphics.DrawString(), but this method has horrible kerning problems. What should I do? How can I get TextRenderer.DrawText() to anti-alias properly using the Bitmap's contents?
Looks terrible:
Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(100, 100, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb);
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
{
g.Clear(Color.Red);
TextFormatFlags tf = TextFormatFlags.Left;
TextRenderer.DrawText(g, #"C:\Development\Testing\blag", font, clip, Color.White,
Color.Transparent, tf);
}
Looks good, but I want to render this onto a bitmap, NOT onto the control's surface:
protected override void OnPaintBackground(PaintEventArgs e)
{
e.Graphics.Clear(Color.Red);
TextFormatFlags tf = TextFormatFlags.Left;
TextRenderer.DrawText(e.Graphics, #"C:\Development\Testing\blag", font, clip,
Color.White, Color.Transparent, tf);
}
What is the difference?
The answer is not to use TextRenderer. TextRenderer is a wrapper for the GDI (not GDI+) implementation of text rendering, which has lots of features, but doesn't interoperate well with in-memory DCs as you have discovered.
Use Graphics.DrawString & Graphics.MeasureString, but remember to pass it StringFormat.GenericTypographic to get accurate size and positioning.
The reason TextRenderer was introduced initially was that GDI+ didn't support all the complex scripts that GDI's Uniscribe engine did. Over time however GDI+ support for complex scripts has been expanded, and these days there aren't any good reasons left to use TextRenderer (it's not even the faster of the two anymore, in fact quite the opposite it appears).
Really, though, unless you are running into serious, measurable performance issues just use Graphics.DrawString.
I believe the problem is that the clear type text rendering doesn't work if the background is transparent. A few possible solutions.
Option 1. Fill the background of your bitmap with a color.
If you do this (as Tim Robinson did above in his code example by using g.Clear(Color.Red)) clear type will do the right thing. But your bitmap won't be completely transparent which might not be acceptable. If you use Graphics.MeasureText, you can fill just the rectangle around your text, if you like.
Option 2. Set TextRenderingHint = TextRenderingHintAntiAliasGridFit
This appears to turn off clear type. The text will be rendered at a lower quality than clear type on a background, but much better than the mess clear type on no background creates.
Option 3. Fill the text rectangle with white, draw the text and then find all the non-text pixels and put them back to transparent.
using (Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(someWidth, someHeight))
{
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
{
// figure out where our text will go
Point textPoint = new Point(someX, someY);
Size textSize = g.MeasureString(someText, someFont).ToSize();
Rectangle textRect = new Rectangle(textPoint, textSize);
// fill that rect with white
g.FillRectangle(Brushes.White, textRect);
// draw the text
g.DrawString(someText, someFont, Brushes.Black, textPoint);
// set any pure white pixels back to transparent
for (int x = textRect.Left; x <= textRect.Left + textRect.Width; x++)
{
for (int y = textRect.Top; y <= textRect.Top + textRect.Height; y++)
{
Color c = bmp.GetPixel(x, y);
if (c.A == 255 && c.R == 255 && c.G == 255 && c.B == 255)
{
bmp.SetPixel(x, y, Color.Transparent);
}
}
}
}
}
I know, it's a horrible hack, but it appears to work.
The answer is to use a BuffersGraphicsContext. This is the same system that .NET uses internally when you set the ControlStyles.OptimizedDoubleBuffer style on a control.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/b367a457.aspx for more information about double buffering in .NET.
Another possible solution: Draw the whole thing to the screen, bitmap with text on top, and then write some code to 'screen capture' that portion of the screen. Not practical in all cases but you're right, DrawString creates weird text and DrawText onto a bitmap looks horrible.
If your bitmap is not the same size as your display area, it might just be a resizing issue, where .NET scales the bitmap to the display size and you get funny looking text.
Can you test with a bitmap created at the same size as your display area?
Can you post the smallest program that suffers from this problem? I can't reproduce it like this -- the antialiasing looks fine:
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Forms;
public class Program
{
public static void Main()
{
Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(100, 100, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb);
using (Font font = new Font("Arial", 10, GraphicsUnit.Point))
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
{
Rectangle clip = Rectangle.FromLTRB(0, 0, 100, 100);
g.Clear(Color.Red);
TextFormatFlags tf = TextFormatFlags.Left;
TextRenderer.DrawText(g, #"C:\Development\Testing\blag", font, clip, Color.White, Color.Transparent, tf);
}
Form form = new Form();
form.BackgroundImage = bmp;
Application.Run(form);
}
}
Related
I tried looking through a few questions on here already but none seemed to fit.
This is what i've tried:
listBox1.BackColor = Color.FromArgb(85, 200, 200, 200);
But at runtime, there's an error. It states that the component doesn't support transparency. I'm asking on here because there could be a workaround. If anyone could help, that'd be great. Thanks in advance!
I suggest going for a ListView in Details View instead.
This is a more modern control, much more powerful and also more supportive when it comes to adding some extra styling..
ListView has a BackgroundImage which alone may be good enough. It doesn't support transparency, though.
But with a few tricks you can make it fake it by copying the background that would shine through..:
void setLVBack(ListView lv)
{
int alpha = 64;
Point p1 = lv.Parent.PointToScreen(lv.Location);
Point p2 = lv.PointToScreen(Point.Empty);
p2.Offset(-p1.X, -p1.Y );
if (lv.BackgroundImage != null) lv.BackgroundImage.Dispose();
lv.Hide();
Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(lv.Parent.Width, lv.Parent.Height);
lv.Parent.DrawToBitmap(bmp, lv.Parent.ClientRectangle);
Rectangle r = lv.Bounds;
r.Offset(p2.X, p2.Y);
bmp = bmp.Clone(r, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb);
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
using (SolidBrush br = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(alpha, lv.BackColor)))
{
g.FillRectangle(br, lv.ClientRectangle);
}
lv.BackgroundImage = bmp;
lv.Show();
}
A few notes:
I hide the listview for a short moment while getting the background pixels
I calculate an offset to allow borders; one could (and maybe should?) also use SystemInformation.Border3DSize.Height etc..
I crop the right area using a bitmap.Clone overload
finally I paint over the image with the background color of the LV, green in my case
you can set the alpha to control how much I paint over the image
Also note that I dispose of any previous image, so you can repeat the call when necessary, e.g. when sizes or positions change or the background etc..
The ListView overlaps a PictureBox (left) but sits on a TabPage with an image of its own.
Result:
Everywhere I look online, I see people posting on how to successfully crop an image. However, I want to 'crop'/ clear a hole out of an image. I want to keep the original image, but crop out a rectangle
As you can see in the image above, I have "cropped" out the kittens face. I maintained the original image, but removed only part of it. I cannot figure out how to do that.
Assuming you want to replace the original pixel colors with transparency you run into a small problem: You can't draw or fill with transparency in GDI+.
But you can use Graphics.Clear(Color.Transparent).
To do that you restrict the region where the Graphics object will draw. Here we can use the simple cropping rectangle but you can clear more complex shapes using a GraphicsPath..
Example using a bitmap bmp:
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
{
Rectangle crop = new Rectangle(222,222,55,55);
g.SetClip(crop);
g.Clear(Color.Transparent);
}
bmp.Save(somefilename, ImageFormat.Png);
Setting your Graphics object's CompositingMode property to CompositingMode.SourceCopy will allow your drawing operations to replace the alpha value instead of proportionally opacifying it:
public static void TestDrawTransparent()
{
//This code will, successfully, draw something transparent overwriting an opaque area.
//More precisely, it creates a 100*100 fully-opaque red square with a 50*50 semi-transparent center.
using(Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(100, 100, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb))
{
using(Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
using(Brush opaqueRedBrush = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(255, 255, 0, 0)))
using(Brush semiRedBrush = new SolidBrush(Color.FromArgb(128, 255, 0, 0)))
{
g.Clear(Color.Transparent);
Rectangle bigRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, 100, 100);
Rectangle smallRect = new Rectangle(25, 25, 50, 50);
g.CompositingMode = System.Drawing.Drawing2D.CompositingMode.SourceCopy;
g.FillRectangle(opaqueRedBrush, bigRect);
g.FillRectangle(semiRedBrush, smallRect);
}
bmp.Save(#"C:\FilePath\TestDrawTransparent.png", ImageFormat.Png);
}
}
In this code, I first draw a fully-opaque red square, then a semi-transparent red square "over" it. The result is a semi-transparent "hole" in the square:
And on a black background:
A zero-opacity brush works just as well, leaving a clear hole through the image (I checked).
With that in mind, you should be able to crop any shapes you want, simply by filling them with a zero-opacity brush.
I'm facing a really perplexing problem..
I have a .Net 2.0 C# WinForms project.
I'm trying to stretch a bitmap onto a drawing area, but for some reason it is not stretched properly - I get alpha channel gradient on the right and bottom margins of my drawing area.
It took me quite a while to isolate this problem. I create a few lines of code that reproduce the problem (see code snippet and screenshot below).
Can anyone please shed some light over this matter?
Thanks in advance.
--
private void Form1_Paint( object sender, PaintEventArgs e )
{
// Create a black bitmap resource sized 10x10
Image resourceImg = new Bitmap( 10, 10 );
Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage( resourceImg );
g.FillRectangle( Brushes.Black, 0, 0, resourceImg.Width, resourceImg.Height );
Rectangle drawingArea = new Rectangle( 0, 0, 200, 200 ); // Set the size of the drawing area
e.Graphics.FillRectangle( Brushes.Aqua, drawingArea ); // Fill an aqua colored rectangle
e.Graphics.DrawImage( resourceImg, drawingArea ); // Stretch the resource image
// Expected result: The resource image should completely cover the aqua rectangle.
// Actual Result: The right and bottom edges become gradiently transparent (revealing the aqua rectangle under it)
}
The behavior has to do with how GDI+ handles edges. In this case, you're scaling a very small image over a large area, and you haven't told GDI+ how to handle the edge. If you use the ImageAttributes class and set the WrapMode appropriately, you can get around this issue.
For example:
private void Form1_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
{
using (var resourceImg = new Bitmap(10, 10))
{
using (var g = Graphics.FromImage(resourceImg))
{
g.FillRectangle(Brushes.Black, 0, 0,
resourceImg.Width, resourceImg.Height);
}
var drawingArea = new Rectangle(0, 0, 200, 200);
e.Graphics.FillRectangle(Brushes.Aqua, drawingArea);
using (var attribs = new ImageAttributes())
{
attribs.SetWrapMode(WrapMode.TileFlipXY);
e.Graphics.DrawImage(resourceImg, drawingArea,
0, 0, resourceImg.Width, resourceImg.Height,
GraphicsUnit.Pixel, attribs);
}
}
}
The above code should produce an all black image. If you comment out the attribs.SetWrapMode(WrapMode.TileFlipXY); statement, you should see the blue gradient. With the wrap mode set, you're telling GDI+ to flip the image at the edges, so it will pick up more black and not fade things out at the edge when it scales the image.
I am currently painting a light blue, partly transparent overlay over owner-drawn objects to indicate certain state. It's OK but I thought that it would be even nicer if I could at some sort of glass effect to further establish the idea that the particular object has "something" overlaid over the top of it.
I thought that some glass streaks, for example, in addition to the blue transparency would lend a nice effect.
I've Googled around for GDI+ (and others) algorithms to do simple things painting like this but have come up empty. Links to any (fairly simple) algorithms in any language would be appreciated. I prefer .NET but can figure out the painting from pseudo-code on up.
Sorry, shoul've also specified that I need to target WinXP and using .NET version 2.0 - So unable to use WPF or Vista/Win7 goodies.
I've not done this myself but, have used codeproject source to render a sample...Try this:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/GDI-plus/Image-Glass-Reflection.aspx
public static Image DrawReflection(Image _Image, Color _BackgroundColor, int _Reflectivity)
{
// Calculate the size of the new image
int height = (int)(_Image.Height + (_Image.Height * ((float)_Reflectivity / 255)));
Bitmap newImage = new Bitmap(_Image.Width, height, PixelFormat.Format24bppRgb);
newImage.SetResolution(_Image.HorizontalResolution, _Image.VerticalResolution);
using (Graphics graphics = Graphics.FromImage(newImage))
{
// Initialize main graphics buffer
graphics.Clear(_BackgroundColor);
graphics.DrawImage(_Image, new Point(0, 0));
graphics.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.HighQualityBicubic;
Rectangle destinationRectangle = new Rectangle(0, _Image.Size.Height,
_Image.Size.Width, _Image.Size.Height);
// Prepare the reflected image
int reflectionHeight = (_Image.Height * _Reflectivity) / 255;
Image reflectedImage = new Bitmap(_Image.Width, reflectionHeight);
// Draw just the reflection on a second graphics buffer
using (Graphics gReflection = Graphics.FromImage(reflectedImage))
{
gReflection.DrawImage(_Image,
new Rectangle(0, 0, reflectedImage.Width, reflectedImage.Height),
0, _Image.Height - reflectedImage.Height, reflectedImage.Width,
reflectedImage.Height, GraphicsUnit.Pixel);
}
reflectedImage.RotateFlip(RotateFlipType.RotateNoneFlipY);
Rectangle imageRectangle =
new Rectangle(destinationRectangle.X, destinationRectangle.Y,
destinationRectangle.Width,
(destinationRectangle.Height * _Reflectivity) / 255);
// Draw the image on the original graphics
graphics.DrawImage(reflectedImage, imageRectangle);
// Finish the reflection using a gradiend brush
LinearGradientBrush brush = new LinearGradientBrush(imageRectangle,
Color.FromArgb(255 - _Reflectivity, _BackgroundColor),
_BackgroundColor, 90, false);
graphics.FillRectangle(brush, imageRectangle);
}
return newImage;
}
I was actually able to achieve a basic glass effect by overlaying my image with a rectangle about one third the size of the image below that contains a gradient fill of white that starts at 25% opacity and goes to 75% opacity. This is single bit of painting produces a glassy "streak" that I was happy with. The same idea could be repeated a number of times with a variety of rect widths to produce several "streaks" that will give the illusion of a glass overlay.
You could try the Aero Glass function, if you are using Vista or Windows 7.
These might be helpful:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa969537%28VS.85%29.aspx#blurbehind
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms748975.aspx
When rendering text into a bitmap, I find that text looks very bad when rendered on top of an area with non-opaque alpha. The problem is progressively worse as the underlying pixels become more transparent. If I had to guess I'd say that when underlying pixels are transparent, the text renderer draws any anti-aliased 'gray' pixels as solid black.
Here are some screenshots:
Text drawn on top of transparent pixels:
Text drawn on top of semi-transparent pixels:
Text drawn on opaque pixels:
Here is the code used to render the text:
g.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.HighQuality;
g.DrawString("Press the spacebar", Font, Brushes.Black, textLeft, textTop);
The option I used to workaround this problem was:
Graphics graphics = new Graphics();
graphics.TextRenderingHint = System.Drawing.Text.TextRenderingHint.SingleBitPerPixelGridFit;
There are some others useful options in TextRenderingHint
Hope it helps
There is a very simple answer to this...
g.TextRenderingHint = Drawing.Text.TextRenderingHint.AntiAliasGridFit
If you set this before you render your text, it will come out clear. In addition, this methods supports more font sizes (The default only goes up to size 56).
Thanks for reading this post.
The first output is what you get when you draw black text on a black background, probably Color.Transparent. The 2nd was drawn on an almost-black background. The 3rd was drawn on the same background it is being displayed with.
Anti-aliasing cannot work when on a transparent background. The colors used for the anti-aliasing pixels will not blend the letter shape into the background when the text is displayed with a different background. Those pixels will now become very noticeable and make the text look very bad.
Note that SmoothingMode doesn't affect text output. It will look slightly less bad if you use a lower quality TextRenderingHint and a background color that's grayish with a alpha of zero. Only TextRenderingHint.SingleBitPerPixelGridFit avoids all anti-aliasing troubles.
Getting a perfect fix for this is very difficult. Vista's glass effect on the window title bar uses very subtle shading to give the text a well defined background color. You'd need SysInternals' ZoomIt tool to really see it. DrawThemeTextEx() function with a non-zero iGlowSize.
If you're looking for something that preserves antialiasing a bit better than GDI+ does by default, you can call Graphics.Clear with a chroma key, then manually remove the chroma artifacts that result. (See Why does DrawString look so crappy? and Ugly looking text problem.)
Here's how I ultimately ended up solving a similar problem:
static Bitmap TextToBitmap(string text, Font font, Color foregroundColor)
{
SizeF textSize;
using ( var g = Graphics.FromHwndInternal(IntPtr.Zero) )
textSize = g.MeasureString(text, font);
var image = new Bitmap((int)Math.Ceiling(textSize.Width), (int)Math.Ceiling(textSize.Height));
var brush = new SolidBrush(foregroundColor);
using ( var g = Graphics.FromImage(image) )
{
g.Clear(Color.Magenta);
g.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.AntiAlias;
g.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.HighQualityBicubic;
g.PixelOffsetMode = PixelOffsetMode.HighQuality;
g.DrawString(text, font, brush, 0, 0);
g.Flush();
}
image.MakeTransparent(Color.Magenta);
// The image now has a transparent background, but around each letter are antialiasing artifacts still keyed to magenta. We need to remove those.
RemoveChroma(image, foregroundColor, Color.Magenta);
return image;
}
static unsafe void RemoveChroma(Bitmap image, Color foregroundColor, Color chroma)
{
if (image == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("image");
BitmapData data = null;
try
{
data = image.LockBits(new Rectangle(Point.Empty, image.Size), ImageLockMode.ReadWrite, PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb);
for ( int y = data.Height - 1; y >= 0; --y )
{
int* row = (int*)(data.Scan0 + (y * data.Stride));
for ( int x = data.Width - 1; x >= 0; --x )
{
if ( row[x] == 0 ) continue;
Color pixel = Color.FromArgb(row[x]);
if ( (pixel != foregroundColor) &&
((pixel.B >= foregroundColor.B) && (pixel.B <= chroma.B)) &&
((pixel.G >= foregroundColor.G) && (pixel.G <= chroma.G)) &&
((pixel.R >= foregroundColor.R) && (pixel.R <= chroma.R)) )
{
row[x] = Color.FromArgb(
255 - ((int)
((Math.Abs(pixel.B - foregroundColor.B) +
Math.Abs(pixel.G - foregroundColor.G) +
Math.Abs(pixel.R - foregroundColor.R)) / 3)),
foregroundColor).ToArgb();
}
}
}
}
finally
{
if (data != null) image.UnlockBits(data);
}
}
It's a shame GDI/GDI+ doesn't do this already, but that would be sensible, wouldn't it? :)
If you aren't able to use an unsafe context, you could easily use the same logic with Bitmap.GetPixel and Bitmap.SetPixel, though it will be significantly slower.