Question

I am having quite a few problems saving a C# control to a bitmap file. The control in question is a kind of drawing surface on which the user can write text, draw pictures and paint boxes. The control is resizable and draggable. What happen is, when the control is really big and is not totally visible on the screen, the parts of the control not visible are saved half-drawn on the bitmap. The code used to generate the bitmap is quite simple:

Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(myControl.Width, myControl.Height);
myControl.DrawToBitmap(bitmap);

I have tried the following methods to try to have a fully painted bitmap, without any success:

myControl.Invalidate(myControl.ClientRectangle, true);
myControl.Refresh();
myControl.Update();
Application.DoEvents();

I cannot scale the control down to make it fully visible since resolution and image quality are very important for that project. In fact, I am actually trying to scale the image up to increase it’s quality. Are there ways I am not aware of generating an image from a control ?

Tank you.

Answer 1

DrawToBitmap has limitations and dont always work as expected. Try instead work with native GDI+

Here is example