Question

What is the fastest (few lines of code and low resource usage) way to create an empty (0x0 px or 1×1 px and fully transparent) BitmapSource instance in c# that is used when nothing should be rendered.

Answer 1

Use the Create method.

Example stolen from MSDN: 🙂

int width = 128;
int height = width;
int stride = width/8;
byte[] pixels = new byte[height*stride];

// Try creating a new image with a custom palette.
List<System.Windows.Media.Color> colors = new List<System.Windows.Media.Color>();
colors.Add(System.Windows.Media.Colors.Red);
colors.Add(System.Windows.Media.Colors.Blue);
colors.Add(System.Windows.Media.Colors.Green);
BitmapPalette myPalette = new BitmapPalette(colors);

// Creates a new empty image with the pre-defined palette
BitmapSource image = BitmapSource.Create(
                                         width, height,
                                         96, 96,
                                         PixelFormats.Indexed1,
                                         myPalette, 
                                         pixels, 
                                         stride);