Question

I’m trying to capture the screen and then convert it to a Base64 string. This is my code:

Rectangle bounds = Screen.GetBounds(Point.Empty);
Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(bounds.Width, bounds.Height);

using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))
{
   g.CopyFromScreen(Point.Empty, Point.Empty, bounds.Size);
}

// Convert the image to byte[]
System.IO.MemoryStream stream = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
bitmap.Save(stream, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Bmp);
byte[] imageBytes = stream.ToArray();

// Write the bytes (as a string) to the textbox
richTextBox1.Text = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(imageBytes);

// Convert byte[] to Base64 String
string base64String = Convert.ToBase64String(imageBytes);

Using a richTextBox to debug, it shows:

BM6�~

So for some reason the bytes aren’t correct which causes the base64String to become null. Any idea what I’m doing wrong? Thanks.

Answer 1

The characters you get by doing System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(imageBytes) will (almost certainly) contain unprintable characters. This could cause you to only see those few characters. If you first convert it to a base64-string, then it will contain only printable characters and can be shown in a text box:

// Convert byte[] to Base64 String
string base64String = Convert.ToBase64String(imageBytes);

// Write the bytes (as a Base64 string) to the textbox
richTextBox1.Text = base64String;