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Drawing to screen directly on top of all window [duplicate]

I want to draw directly on the desktop in C#. From searching a bit, I ended up using a Graphics object from the Desktop HDC (null). Then, I painted normally using this Graphics object.
The problem is that my shapes get lost when any part of the screen is redrawn. I tried a While loop, but it actually ends up drawing as fast as the application can, which is not the update rate of the desktop.
Normally, I would need to put my drawing code in a "OnPaint" event, but such thing does not exist for the desktop.
How would I do it?
Example code: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1536141/how-to-draw-directly-on-the-windows-desktop-c

I posted two solutions for a similar requirement here
Basically you have two options.
1- Get a graphics object for the desktop and start drawing to it. The problem is if you need to start clearing what you have previously drawn etc.
Point pt = Cursor.Position; // Get the mouse cursor in screen coordinates
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromHwnd(IntPtr.Zero))
{
g.DrawEllipse(Pens.Black, pt.X - 10, pt.Y - 10, 20, 20);
}
2- The second option that I provide in the link above is to create a transparent top-most window and do all your drawing in that window. This basically provides a transparent overlay for the desktop which you can draw on. One possible downside to this, as I mention in the original answer, is that other windows which are also top-most and are created after your app starts will obscure your top most window. This can be solved if it is a problem though.
For option 2, making the form transparent is as simple as using a transparency key, this allows mouse clicks etc. to fall through to the underlying desktop.
BackColor = Color.LightGreen;
TransparencyKey = Color.LightGreen;

When you draw to HDC(NULL) you draw to the screen, in an unmanaged way. As you've discovered, as soon as windows refreshes that part of the screen, your changes are overwritten.
There are a couple of options, depending upon what you want to achieve:
create a borderless, possibly
non-rectangular window. (Use
SetWindowRgn to make a window
non-rectangular.) You can make this a child of the desktop window.
subclass the desktop window. This is not straightforward, and involves
injecting a DLL into the
Explorer.exe process.

To get an OnPaint for the desktop you would need to subclass the desktop window and use your drawing logic when it receives a WM_PAINT/WM_ERASEBKGND message.
As the thread you linked to says, you can only intercept messages sent to a window of an external process using a hook (SetWindowsHookEx from a DLL).
As mentioned a transparent window is another way to do it, or (depending on the update frequency) copying, drawing and setting a temporary wallpaper (as bginfo does).

This is difficult to do correctly.
It will be far easier, and more reliable, to make your own borderless form instead.

rectangle drawn on desktop is not persistent in c# [duplicate]

I want to draw directly on the desktop in C#. From searching a bit, I ended up using a Graphics object from the Desktop HDC (null). Then, I painted normally using this Graphics object.
The problem is that my shapes get lost when any part of the screen is redrawn. I tried a While loop, but it actually ends up drawing as fast as the application can, which is not the update rate of the desktop.
Normally, I would need to put my drawing code in a "OnPaint" event, but such thing does not exist for the desktop.
How would I do it?
Example code: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1536141/how-to-draw-directly-on-the-windows-desktop-c

I posted two solutions for a similar requirement here
Basically you have two options.
1- Get a graphics object for the desktop and start drawing to it. The problem is if you need to start clearing what you have previously drawn etc.
Point pt = Cursor.Position; // Get the mouse cursor in screen coordinates
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromHwnd(IntPtr.Zero))
{
g.DrawEllipse(Pens.Black, pt.X - 10, pt.Y - 10, 20, 20);
}
2- The second option that I provide in the link above is to create a transparent top-most window and do all your drawing in that window. This basically provides a transparent overlay for the desktop which you can draw on. One possible downside to this, as I mention in the original answer, is that other windows which are also top-most and are created after your app starts will obscure your top most window. This can be solved if it is a problem though.
For option 2, making the form transparent is as simple as using a transparency key, this allows mouse clicks etc. to fall through to the underlying desktop.
BackColor = Color.LightGreen;
TransparencyKey = Color.LightGreen;

When you draw to HDC(NULL) you draw to the screen, in an unmanaged way. As you've discovered, as soon as windows refreshes that part of the screen, your changes are overwritten.
There are a couple of options, depending upon what you want to achieve:
create a borderless, possibly
non-rectangular window. (Use
SetWindowRgn to make a window
non-rectangular.) You can make this a child of the desktop window.
subclass the desktop window. This is not straightforward, and involves
injecting a DLL into the
Explorer.exe process.

To get an OnPaint for the desktop you would need to subclass the desktop window and use your drawing logic when it receives a WM_PAINT/WM_ERASEBKGND message.
As the thread you linked to says, you can only intercept messages sent to a window of an external process using a hook (SetWindowsHookEx from a DLL).
As mentioned a transparent window is another way to do it, or (depending on the update frequency) copying, drawing and setting a temporary wallpaper (as bginfo does).

This is difficult to do correctly.
It will be far easier, and more reliable, to make your own borderless form instead.

DrawToBitmap on windows xp

I have a user control that shows plate number of a vehicle(it contains a background image and some TextBoxes), I use DrawToBitmap() Method to get a bitmap of this control and show the bitmap on my form, It works fine on Windows 7 but in Windows XP service pack 3 only background image is drawn and texts in textboxes are not drawn, what should I do?
var clt = new ControlLisenceTouch();Bitmap b = new Bitmap(clt.Width, clt.Height);
clt.License = License.FromCar(someCar);
clt.Invalidate(true);
clt.DrawToBitmap(b, Rectangle.FromLTRB(0, 0, clt.Width, clt.Height));
pictureBox1.Image = b;

This guy had the same sort of problem, and while the answer is not perfect, it did do it for him. The biggest problem here was that if another window was covering your control, that window would be shown as well. Look at my answer, the third edit shows taking a screen shot, and cropping a control out of it.
How can I get a screenshot of control? DrawToBitmap not working
According to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.control.drawtobitmap.aspx
Windows XP sp3 is fully supported

notifyicon image looks terrible once image ends up in system tray

I am using Visual Studio 2010, C#, on Windows 7.
I have added a notify control to my project and set it to an icon I have imported to the project. The icon image is really good looking if I just preview it, but once I run my code and see it in the system tray, then it's really terrible, like the sides are dotted instead of straight lines and so on. I have tried 16x16, 24x24, 32x32 and 48x48 of the same file but I am having terrible results.
Have I missed anything?
myNotifyIcon.Icon = SysDir.Properties.Resources.icon2_32_ico_rgba;

The problem with directly using the icon in your resources is that instead of choosing the right icon version in you icon file, the framework simply scales the default icon version to whatever size the notification area needs. That's why you are seeing jagged edges.
To get the best quality, you'll need to choose the right size in your icon by yourself.
First, instead of directly setting your NotifyIcon.Icon to an icon in your resources, create a new Icon instance. Doing so will allow you to choose a specific icon size in your icon resource. Using SystemInformation.SmallIconSize will get you the size the notification area needs.
So :
myNotifyIcon.Icon = new Icon(Properties.Resources.MyIcon, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize);
Now, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize always returns the right icon size, but only if your application is DPI-aware (otherwise, it always returns 16). If your application isn't DPI-aware, and it is used on a system where DPI-scaling is enabled, the line above will select the 16x16 icon in your resource, at it'll be scaled up to whatever size the notification area needs (in other words, ugly icon).
By making your app DPI-aware, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize will return the right size, taking into account DPI-scaling. For instance, if DPI-scaling is at 150%, SystemInformation.SmallIconSize will return 24 (16 × 1.5).
To make your app DPI-aware, simply add this to your app.manifest, inside the <asmv1:assembly> tag:
<asmv3:application xmlns:asmv3="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3" >
<asmv3:windowsSettings xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SMI/2005/WindowsSettings">
<dpiAware>true</dpiAware>
</asmv3:windowsSettings>
</asmv3:application>

Edit:
The info I am linking seems to be suspect at this point. Try it out, but if it isn't working, then I suggest you edit your question to post screenshots of all your experiments (each icon size and how it gets scaled).
Original:
32x32x256 is the right size and color depth according to this link:
http://www.hhhh.org/cloister/csharp/icons/
But you have to be very careful when constructing that image:
Take a 16x16x256 image, and get it to look nice
Double it to 32x32 (careful not to blur or resample if doing this in a paint program)
The reason is that Windows will "resize" the 32x32 image to 16x16 by simply throwing away 3/4 of the pixels. The link above demonstrates this phenomenon with a couple screenshots:
Before:
After:
I'm not sure how much of the color-depth pickyness (256 colors only?)/resampling issues are still true on Windows 7, but it certainly seems to be the case on XP.

I use NotifyIcon in a C# WinForms application and no matter what the icon I use contains, after 2 resolution changes it ends up blurry.
My best guess is, that windows doesn't actually rescale the original every time but rescales the (already rescaled) version from the icon cache.
The only solution I found so far was setting the icon again after a resolution/dpi change:
SystemEvents.DisplaySettingsChanged += (sender, eventArgs) => {
trayIcon.Icon = MyIcon;
};
I tried all kind of resolutions and bit depths in the icons but they all got blurred eventually. Now I only use a single 16x16 32b image in the icon and so far it works great on all tested displays.

Taking screenshots in Windows Vista, Windows 7, with transparent areas outside the app region

I am trying to take a screenshot of an application and I would like to make the parts of the rectangle that are not part of the applications region be transparent. So for instance on a standard windows application I would like to make the rounded corners transparent.
I wrote a quick test application which works on on XP (or vista/windows 7 with aero turned off):
protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e)
{
base.OnPaint(e);
Graphics g = e.Graphics;
// Just find a window to test with
IntPtr hwnd = FindWindowByCaption(IntPtr.Zero, "Calculator");
WINDOWINFO info = new WINDOWINFO();
info.cbSize = (uint)Marshal.SizeOf(info);
GetWindowInfo(hwnd, ref info);
Rectangle r = Rectangle.FromLTRB(info.rcWindow.Left, info.rcWindow.Top, info.rcWindow.Right, info.rcWindow.Bottom);
IntPtr hrgn = CreateRectRgn(info.rcWindow.Left, info.rcWindow.Top, info.rcWindow.Right, info.rcWindow.Bottom);
GetWindowRgn(hwnd, hrgn);
// fill a rectangle which would be where I would probably
// write some mask color
g.FillRectangle(Brushes.Red, r);
// fill the region over the top, all I am trying to do here
// is show the contrast between the applications region and
// the rectangle that the region would be placed in
Region region = Region.FromHrgn(hrgn);
region.Translate(info.rcWindow.Left, info.rcWindow.Top);
g.FillRegion(Brushes.Blue, region);
}
When I run this test app on XP (or Vista/Windows 7 with Aero off), I get something like this, which is great because I can eek an xor mask out of this that can be used later with BitBlt.
removed dead Imageshack link - Screenshot
Here is the problem, on Vista or Windows 7 with Aero enabled, there isn't necessarily a region on the window, in fact in most cases there isn't. Can anybody help me figure out some way to build a mask like this on these platforms?
Here are some of the approaches I have already tried...
1. Using the PrintWindow function: This doesn't work because it gives back a screenshot taken of the window with Aero off and this window is a different shape from the window returned with Aero on
2 Using the Desktop Window Manager API to get a full size thumbnail: This didn't work because it draws directly to the screen and from what I can tell you can't get a screenshot directly out of this api. Yeah, I could open a window with a pink background, show the thumbnail, take a screenshot then hide this temporary window but thats a horrible user experience and a complete hack I would rather not have my name on.
3. Using Graphics.CopyFromScreen or some other pinvoke variant of this: This doesn't work because I can't assume that the window I need information from is at the top of the z-order on the screen.
Right now, the best solution I can think of is to special case Aero on Windows 7 and Vista to manually rub out the corners by hard coding some graphics paths I paint out but this solution would suck since any application that performs custom skinning will break this.
Can you think of another or better solution?
If you are here, thanks for taking time to read this post, I appreciate any help or direction that you can offer!

If you are looking for a finished application, there is 7capture, which captures also the translucency, so images can be saved to PNG format for later compositing.
EDIT:
The original question and comments indicate you are looking to produce a region on Windows Vista/7 that you can then use to mask out parts the captured image, as is done with Windows XP and non-Aero UIs. Using a region is not going to give you the result you are looking for, since the window outline is not computed as a region, but as an image with variable transparency - RGBA. The Alpha channel in that image is your mask, but it's not an on-off mask like a region, but a gradual mask with a range of values from pixels being fully included to being fully masked out.
Although it uses undocumented APIs, the code at http://spazzarama.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/screen-capture-with-vista-dwm/ will capture to a RGBA buffer which you can then use to render or save the image with the shadow and other translucency effects intact.
In DwmCapture.cs Change
BackBufferFormat = Format.X8R8G8B8
to
BackBufferFormat = Format.A8R8G8B8
(X8->A8)
And you should then be able to access both the usual RGB data plus transparency from the captured buffer. This can then be saved as a PNG or other format with alpha-channel for composing.

Removed idea that is terrible but would have been awesome back in the '90s
You say that using the DWM API only allows you to capture directly to the screen... could you create a window offscreen (say, X = -100000px, Y = -100000px) but visible (maybe even hidden?) and draw the screenshot to it? Since when using the DWM each window has a backing texture, I'm thinking it might still get drawn fine even though the target isn't directly onscreen.
Also, if you want to go the DirectX route and access the actual DX texture backing the window, I found a few leads that might help (especially the first link):
http://spazzarama.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/screen-capture-with-vista-dwm/
http://channel9.msdn.com/forums/TechOff/251261-Help-Getting-the-shared-window-texture-out-of-DWM-/
http://web.archive.org/web/20080625183653/http://www.aeroxp.org/board/index.php?showtopic=6286
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRTgFTMnT_U

Using Graphics.CopyFromScreen or some other pinvoke variant of this:
This doesn't work because I can't
assume that the window I need
information from is at the top of the
z-order on the screen.
If you know which window you need the information from, can you bring it to the front, call Graphics.CopyFromScreen, and then reset its z-index? I know from experience that Aero does odd things when items are in the background in order to make their glass interface work correctly (partial rendering etc). This may not be great UX; however, it would be a special case and used only when Aero is turned on.

You can take a look at the source code of AeroShot, as described on the main page, it can capture rounded edges and with the Aero Glass transparency effect and save it to a PNG file. It's written in C#.