Question

I have a bitmap that I have created by tiling the same graphic multiple times. When the bitmap is created it colours the tiles based on specific criteria.

When the bitmap is loaded, I then want to give the user the options to change the tile colours based on further pre-defined criteria. Would I therefore need to discard the current bitmap, generate again with the new colours and attach to the panel. Or can I iterate through the bitmap for each tile and change the colours that way?

Thanks.

Answer 1

It depends on how often the user is likely to change the tile colours. If they’re not going to be doing it too often then it’s probably easier to generate a new bitmap (mostly because your code seems like it’s optimized for this scenario).

A better more performant possibiliy however is to use the Bitmap.LockBits/UnlockBits methods to get at the pixel data in the bitmap then manipulate the pixel data direcly. See the MSDN documentation on the Bitmap.LockBits method (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/5ey6h79d.aspx) for a sample on how to do this.