Question

Context: I’m trying to take a screenshot of another window to feed it into OpenCV. I found some code on the web that should be able to convert a BITMAP to something OpenCV can work with. Unfortunately I ran into some trouble.

Question: Why is the bmBits attribute/member always null? (I also tried with PrintWindow instead of BitBlt the result was the same)

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <Windows.h>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    std::wstring windowName = L"Calculator";

    RECT rect;
    HWND hwnd = FindWindow(NULL, windowName.c_str());
    if (hwnd == NULL)
    {
        return 0;
    }
    GetClientRect(hwnd, &rect);

    HDC hdcScreen = GetDC(NULL);
    HDC hdc = CreateCompatibleDC(hdcScreen);
    HBITMAP hbmp = CreateCompatibleBitmap(hdcScreen, 
        rect.right - rect.left, rect.bottom - rect.top);
    SelectObject(hdc, hbmp);

    PrintWindow(hwnd, hdc, PW_CLIENTONLY);

    BITMAP bmp;
    GetObject(hbmp, sizeof(BITMAP), &bmp);

    return 0;
}

Answer 1

The bmBits member is non-null for DIB sections. For device-dependent bitmaps (such as the one you’re creating), the bmBits is not set because the pixels are on the video card, not in main memory.

In your example, you need to change CreateCompatibleBitmap to CreateDIBSection if you want direct access to the bits.