Best way to get a glow effect windows phone 7 - c#

I'm messing around with the Windows Phone 7 sdk and I'm trying to make the screen look like an old fashion digital display. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to make the text "glow" like one of those cool digital clocks. This is the sort of thing I'd assume you would look in to using shaders for, but it seems that shaders are disabled for use on the Windows Phone 7 OS. Any ideas? To be more specific, I want the text to look as though it is a light source and have the color "bleed" out slightly from the actual font.

I'd say its a choice between using an image as a font or blurring with WriteableBitmap.
Using a pre-made font image allows you to make the letters a complex as you want and should perform well. SpriteFont2 is convenient as it can generate the SpriteSheet with effects like glow, stroke, shadow and export an xml file containing the letter positions.
Add the generated png, and xml files to your solution and change the Build Action to content also check you have referenced System.Xml.Linq.
The following class can then be used.
public static class BitmapFont
{
private class FontInfo
{
public FontInfo(WriteableBitmap image, Dictionary<char, Rect> metrics)
{
this.Image = image;
this.Metrics = metrics;
}
public WriteableBitmap Image { get; private set; }
public Dictionary<char, Rect> Metrics { get; private set; }
}
private static Dictionary<string, FontInfo> fonts = new Dictionary<string, FontInfo>();
public static void RegisterFont(string fontFile, string fontMetricsFile)
{
string name = System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fontFile);
BitmapImage image = new BitmapImage();
image.SetSource(App.GetResourceStream(new Uri(fontFile,UriKind.Relative)).Stream);
var metrics = XDocument.Load(fontMetricsFile);
var dict = (from c in metrics.Root.Elements()
let key = (char)((int)c.Attribute("key"))
let rect = new Rect((int)c.Element("x"), (int)c.Element("y"), (int)c.Element("width"), (int)c.Element("height"))
select new { Char = key, Metrics = rect }).ToDictionary(x => x.Char, x => x.Metrics);
fonts.Add(name,new FontInfo(new WriteableBitmap(image),dict));
}
public static WriteableBitmap DrawFont(string text, string fontName)
{
var font = fonts[fontName];
var letters = text.Select(x => font.Metrics[x]).ToArray();
var height = (int)letters.Max(x => x.Height);
var width = (int)letters.Sum(x => x.Width);
WriteableBitmap bmp = new WriteableBitmap(width, height);
int[] source = font.Image.Pixels, dest = bmp.Pixels;
int sourceWidth = font.Image.PixelWidth;
int destX = 0;
foreach (var letter in letters)
{
for (int sourceY = (int)letter.Y, destY = 0; destY < letter.Height; sourceY++, destY++)
{
Array.Copy(source, (sourceY * sourceWidth) + (int)letter.X, dest, (destY * width) + destX, (int)letter.Width);
}
destX += (int)letter.Width;
}
return bmp;
}
public static Rectangle[] GetElements(string text, string fontName)
{
var font = fonts[fontName];
return (from c in text
let r = font.Metrics[c]
select new Rectangle
{
Width = r.Width,
Height = r.Height,
Fill = new ImageBrush {
ImageSource = font.Image,
AlignmentX=AlignmentX.Left,
AlignmentY=AlignmentY.Top,
Transform = new TranslateTransform { X = -r.X, Y = -r.Y },
Stretch=Stretch.None
},
}).ToArray();
}
}
Usage
//Register the font once.
BitmapFont.RegisterFont("Font.png", "Metrics.xml");
//Draws the text to a new bitmap, font name is image name without extension.
image.Source = BitmapFont.DrawFont(DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString(), "Font");
//Alternatively put these elements in a horizontal StackPanel, or ItemsControl
//This doesn't create any new bitmaps and should be more efficient.
//You could alter the method to transform each letter too.
BitmapFont.GetElements(DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString(), "Font");
If you want to blur see a BoxBlur implementation here or use WriteableBitmapEx.Convolute.

You should make a copy of the TextBlock you want to give the glow to. Bind the text property of the new item to the original item's text property (using ElementName binding). Do the same for location / height / width etc or any other property that you feel that will change on the original item. Set a transparency on the new item as well as a Blur Effect. This will give you a cool glow effect you want.

Several ways
Using a Border for a Glow Effect in Silverlight 3
Creating a Glowing effect in Silverlight
Glow effect in Silverlight
I believe all of them can be used in WP7 as well.

Related

How to put/add image over webview2 control?

I'm using webview2 control instead the regular webbrowser because with webview2 i can browse to website using microsoft edge browser.
usage:
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
webView21.Source = new Uri("https://microsoft.com");
}
the result is:
now I want to add from my hard drive pc my own image so the image will be over the webview control. same as I put image over pictureBox control the same idea.
I don't want to load image like navigating to uri of image but to put image over the control.
just in case this is the official microsoft webview2 control site for WebView2.
For example, I have a weather radar png image and I want to put it like that on the webview2 control:
In WinForms you can show any control (e.g. PictureBox) over any other control (e.g. WebView2) by adding the former to the Controls collection of the latter.
public partial class MainForm : Form
{
public MainForm() => InitializeComponent();
protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{
base.OnLoad(e);
const int WIDTH = 500, HEIGHT = 250;
// Path to image on the local hard drive.
string pathToImageOnLocalHardDrive = Path.Combine(
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory,
"Images",
"0n0cW.jpg"
);
PictureBox pictureBox = CreatePictureBox(
path: pathToImageOnLocalHardDrive,
maxWidth: WIDTH,
maxHeight: HEIGHT
);
pictureBox.Location = new Point(
webView21.Right
- pictureBox.Width
- SystemInformation.VerticalScrollBarWidth - 1,
webView21.Bottom - pictureBox.Height - 1);
webView21.Controls.Add(pictureBox);
}
.
.
.
}
To make the picture box do this:
private PictureBox CreatePictureBox(
string path,
int maxWidth,
int maxHeight)
{
PictureBox newPictureBox = new PictureBox
{
SizeMode = PictureBoxSizeMode.StretchImage,
BackColor = Color.Aqua,
Image = Bitmap.FromFile(path),
};
var measure = (Bitmap)newPictureBox.Image;
float scaleWidth = maxWidth / (float)measure.Width;
float scaleHeight = maxHeight / (float)measure.Height;
float allowedScale = Math.Min(scaleWidth, scaleHeight);
newPictureBox.Size = new Size
{
Width = (int)(allowedScale * measure.Width),
Height = (int)(allowedScale * measure.Height),
};
return newPictureBox;
}
Image Paths
If you add more images, make sure you set this property for them:
The simple answer would be, that this is impossible.
A browser needs a pointer to know, what it needs to show you.
What i believe you are searching for is something like this.
But this is not to load it directly into the webView. This is for building a website with a database that you would load into your webview.

Dynamically display an array of PictureBoxes - Performance issue

I'd like to display coverarts for each album of an MP3 library, a bit like Itunes does (at a later stage, i'd like to click one any of these coverarts to display the list of songs).
I have a form with a panel panel1 and here is the loop i'm using :
int i = 0;
int perCol = 4;
int disBetWeen = 15;
int width = 250;
int height = 250;
foreach(var alb in mp2)
{
myPicBox.Add(new PictureBox());
myPicBox[i].SizeMode = System.Windows.Forms.PictureBoxSizeMode.StretchImage;
myPicBox[i].Location = new System.Drawing.Point(disBetWeen + (disBetWeen * (i % perCol) +(width * (i % perCol))),
disBetWeen + (disBetWeen * (i / perCol))+ (height * (i / perCol)));
myPicBox[i].Name = "pictureBox" + i;
myPicBox[i].Size = new System.Drawing.Size(width, height);
myPicBox[i].ImageLocation = #"C:/Users/Utilisateur/Music/label.jpg";
panel1.Controls.Add(myPicBox[i]);
i++;
}
I'm using the same picture per picturebox for convenience, but i'll use the coverart embedded in each mp3 file eventually.
It's working fine with an abstract of the library (around 50), but i have several thousands of albums. I tried and as expected, it takes a long time to load and i cannot really scroll afterward.
Is there any way to load only what's displayed ? and then how to assess what is displayed with the scrollbars.
Thanks
Winforms really isn't suited to this sort of thing... Using standard controls, you'd probably need to either provision all the image boxes up front and load images in as they become visible, or manage some overflow placeholder for the appropriate length so the scrollbars work.
Assuming Winforms is your only option, I'd suggest you look into creating a custom control with a scroll bar and manually driving the OnPaint event.
That would allow you to keep a cache of images in memory to draw the current view [and a few either side], while giving you total control over when they're loaded/unloaded [well, as "total" as you can get in a managed language - you may still need tune garbage collection]
To get into some details....
Create a new control
namespace SO61574511 {
// Let's inherit from Panel so we can take advantage of scrolling for free
public class ImageScroller : Panel {
// Some numbers to allow us to calculate layout
private const int BitmapWidth = 100;
private const int BitmapSpacing = 10;
// imageCache will keep the images in memory. Ideally we should unload images we're not using, but that's a problem for the reader
private Bitmap[] imageCache;
public ImageScroller() {
//How many images to put in the cache? If you don't know up-front, use a list instead of an array
imageCache = new Bitmap[100];
//Take advantage of Winforms scrolling
this.AutoScroll = true;
this.AutoScrollMinSize = new Size((BitmapWidth + BitmapSpacing) * imageCache.Length, this.Height);
}
protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) {
// Let Winforms paint its bits (like the scroll bar)
base.OnPaint(e);
// Translate whatever _we_ paint by the position of the scrollbar
e.Graphics.TranslateTransform(this.AutoScrollPosition.X,
this.AutoScrollPosition.Y);
// Use this to decide which images are out of sight and can be unloaded
var current_scroll_position = this.HorizontalScroll.Value;
// Loop through the images you want to show (probably not all of them, just those close to the view area)
for (int i = 0; i < imageCache.Length; i++) {
e.Graphics.DrawImage(GetImage(i), new PointF(i * (BitmapSpacing + BitmapWidth), 0));
}
}
//You won't need a random, just for my demo colours below
private Random rnd = new Random();
private Bitmap GetImage(int id) {
// This method is responsible for getting an image.
// If it's already in the cache, use it, otherwise load it
if (imageCache[id] == null) {
//Do something here to load an image into the cache
imageCache[id] = new Bitmap(100, 100);
// For demo purposes, I'll flood fill a random colour
using (var gfx = Graphics.FromImage(imageCache[id])) {
gfx.Clear(Color.FromArgb(255, rnd.Next(0, 255), rnd.Next(0, 255), rnd.Next(0, 255)));
}
}
return imageCache[id];
}
}
}
And Load it into your form, docking to fill the screen....
public Form1() {
InitializeComponent();
this.Controls.Add(new ImageScroller {
Dock = DockStyle.Fill
});
}
You can see it in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftr3v6pLnqA (excuse the mouse trails, I captured area outside the window)

Tesseract OCR - How to Train For an Image Like This

I have a MVC C# application that includes a .Net wrapper for tesseract-ocr nuget. The current version I am using is v4.1.0-beta1. The image that I am try to scan is shown below
My aim is to extract the player name and the number just above them to the left.
I tried making the OCR scan the field/pitch area but the results are way off base. So, I decided to section off all player names and all numbers as seen in the image below. Ratings area marked in blue and player names marked in red. As you can see the name and rating are always the same distance apart.
My current code setup is shown below.
public void Get(HttpPostedFileBase file)
{
using (var engine = new TesseractEngine(Path.Combine(HttpRuntime.AppDomainAppPath, "tessdata"), "eng+deu", EngineMode.Default))
{
var bitmap = (Bitmap)Image.FromStream(file.InputStream, true, true);
using (var img = PixConverter.ToPix(bitmap))
{
SetPlayerRatings(engine, img);
}
}
}
private void SetPlayerRatings(TesseractEngine engine, Pix img)
{
var width = 285;
var height = 76;
var textPositions = Service.Get<Formation>(this.FormationId).TextPositions.ToList();
foreach (var textPosition in textPositions)
{
var playerRating = GetPlayerData(engine, img, new Rect(textPosition.X, textPosition.Y, width, height));
}
}
private static PlayerRating GetPlayerData(TesseractEngine engine, Pix img, Rect region)
{
using (var page = engine.Process(img, region, PageSegMode.Auto))
{
var playerName = page.GetText();
}
var ratingRegion = new Rect(region.X1, region.Y1 - 52, 80, 50);
using (var page = engine.Process(img, ratingRegion, PageSegMode.Auto))
{
var playerRating = page.GetText();
}
}
This code is producing the correct results for the 1st image.
Is there any way to train OCR so that I dont have to workout the X and Y co-ordinates for each player position? I would like to just specify the area of the pitch and have OCR read in the rating followed by the player name.
With specifying coordinates you solved several problems regarding image processing. So if you do not want to specify coordinates, you have to deal with them: e.g. removing graphics component from OCR area like T-shirt, lines.
Next idea: Tesseract API has option GetComponentImages (I expect C# wrapper should provide it too - I am not familiar with C#), so you can iterate over found components.

Desktop capture in png format

I will like to get a screen capture and save it in the format of png of the entire screen. How can I do that?
Could I use the Snipping Tool library to accomplish this? There are some tutorials on the internet that show you how to do this with windows forms and the image is in the format of bitmap.
Here's a little method to capture the contents of any screen.
private static void CaptureScreen(Screen window, string file)
{
try
{
Rectangle s_rect = window.Bounds;
using (Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(s_rect.Width, s_rect.Height))
{
using (Graphics gScreen = Graphics.FromImage(bmp))
gScreen.CopyFromScreen(s_rect.Location, Point.Empty, s_rect.Size);
bmp.Save(file, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Png);
}
}
catch (Exception) { /*TODO: Any exception handling.*/ }
}
Example of usage:
CaptureScreen(Screen.PrimaryScreen, #"B:\exampleScreenshot.png");
EDIT: Coming back to this later I realized it's probably more useful to return an Image object from the function so you can choose how to use the captured bitmap.
I've also made the function a bit more robust now so that it can capture multiple screens (i.e. in a multi-monitor setup). It should accommodate screens of varying heights, but I can't test this myself.
public static Image CaptureScreens(params Screen[] screens) {
if (screens == null || screens.Length == 0)
throw new ArgumentNullException("screens");
// Order them in logical left-to-right fashion.
var orderedScreens = screens.OrderBy(s => s.Bounds.Left).ToList();
// Calculate the total width needed to fit all the screen into a single image
var totalWidth = orderedScreens.Sum(s => s.Bounds.Width);
// In order to handle screens of different sizes, make sure to make the Bitmap large enough to fit the tallest screen
var maxHeight = orderedScreens.Max(s => s.Bounds.Top + s.Bounds.Height);
var bmp = new Bitmap(totalWidth, maxHeight);
int offset = 0;
// Copy each screen to the bitmap
using (var g = Graphics.FromImage(bmp)) {
foreach (var screen in orderedScreens) {
g.CopyFromScreen(screen.Bounds.Left, screen.Bounds.Top, offset, screen.Bounds.Top, screen.Bounds.Size);
offset += screen.Bounds.Width;
}
}
return bmp;
}
New example:
// Capture all monitors and save them to file
CaptureScreens(Screen.AllScreens).Save(#"C:\Users\FooBar\screens.png");

Create thumbnail in .NET C# by defining width

I am using the following code in my website, for thumbnail creation:
string furl = "~/images/thumbs/" + matchString;
lBlogThumb.ImageUrl = GetThumbnailView(furl, 200, 200);
private string GetThumbnailView(string originalImagePath, int height, int width)
{
//Consider Image is stored at path like "ProductImage\\Product1.jpg"
//Now we have created one another folder ProductThumbnail to store thumbnail image of product.
//So let name of image be same, just change the FolderName while storing image.
string thumbnailImagePath = originalImagePath.Replace("thumbs", "thumbs2");
//If thumbnail Image is not available, generate it.
if (!System.IO.File.Exists(Server.MapPath(thumbnailImagePath)))
{
System.Drawing.Image imThumbnailImage;
System.Drawing.Image OriginalImage = System.Drawing.Image.FromFile(Server.MapPath(originalImagePath));
imThumbnailImage = OriginalImage.GetThumbnailImage(width, height,
new System.Drawing.Image.GetThumbnailImageAbort(ThumbnailCallback), IntPtr.Zero);
imThumbnailImage.Save(Server.MapPath(thumbnailImagePath), System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Jpeg);
imThumbnailImage.Dispose();
OriginalImage.Dispose();
}
return thumbnailImagePath;
}
public bool ThumbnailCallback() { return false; }
I would like to change this code, and be able to create a thumbnail defining width ONLY. What I have in mind is actually something like cropping/resizing image, using a static width, maintaining it's ratio. Is that possible;
You mention resizing and cropping. If you want the thumbnail heights to vary with a fixed width, the answers provided already will work for you.
The mention of cropping makes me think that you may want a fixed thumbnail size, with the width filled and any overflowing vertical portion cropped off. If that is the case, you'll need to do a bit more work. I needed something similar recently, and this is what I came up with.
This will create a thumbnail of the original that is sized and cropped in such a way that the source image completely fills the target thumbnail, cropping any overflow. There will be no borders within the thumbnail, even if the original and thumbnail aspect ratios are different.
public System.Drawing.Image CreateThumbnail(System.Drawing.Image image, Size thumbnailSize)
{
float scalingRatio = CalculateScalingRatio(image.Size, thumbnailSize);
int scaledWidth = (int)Math.Round((float)image.Size.Width * scalingRatio);
int scaledHeight = (int)Math.Round((float)image.Size.Height * scalingRatio);
int scaledLeft = (thumbnailSize.Width - scaledWidth) / 2;
int scaledTop = (thumbnailSize.Height - scaledHeight) / 2;
// For portrait mode, adjust the vertical top of the crop area so that we get more of the top area
if (scaledWidth < scaledHeight && scaledHeight > thumbnailSize.Height)
{
scaledTop = (thumbnailSize.Height - scaledHeight) / 4;
}
Rectangle cropArea = new Rectangle(scaledLeft, scaledTop, scaledWidth, scaledHeight);
System.Drawing.Image thumbnail = new Bitmap(thumbnailSize.Width, thumbnailSize.Height);
using (Graphics thumbnailGraphics = Graphics.FromImage(thumbnail))
{
thumbnailGraphics.CompositingQuality = CompositingQuality.HighQuality;
thumbnailGraphics.InterpolationMode = InterpolationMode.HighQualityBicubic;
thumbnailGraphics.SmoothingMode = SmoothingMode.HighQuality;
thumbnailGraphics.DrawImage(image, cropArea);
}
return thumbnail;
}
private float CalculateScalingRatio(Size originalSize, Size targetSize)
{
float originalAspectRatio = (float)originalSize.Width / (float)originalSize.Height;
float targetAspectRatio = (float)targetSize.Width / (float)targetSize.Height;
float scalingRatio = 0;
if (targetAspectRatio >= originalAspectRatio)
{
scalingRatio = (float)targetSize.Width / (float)originalSize.Width;
}
else
{
scalingRatio = (float)targetSize.Height / (float)originalSize.Height;
}
return scalingRatio;
}
To use with your code, you could replace your call to OriginalImage.GetThumbnailImage with this:
imThumbnailImage = CreateThumbnail(OriginalImage, new Size(width, height));
Note that for portrait images, this code will actually shift the thumbnail's viewport slightly higher on the original image. This was done so that portrait shots of people wouldn't result in headless torsos when the thumbnails were created. If you don't want that logic, simply remove the if block following the "portrait mode" comment.
let's have originalWidth=the original image width and thumbWidth. You can simply choose the thumbWidth to your desired value, and calculate the thumbHeigth=originalHeigth*thumbWidth/originalWidth
I got sick of needed to do this and created a lib that does this easily: Link To Documentation & Download
A basic example without rounding with a thumbnail width of 140, below the 'file' is a HttpPostedFile uploaded from an ASP.Net FileUpload control, the HttpPostedFile exposes a stream.
// Save images to disk.
using (System.Drawing.Image image = System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(file.InputStream))
using (System.Drawing.Image thumbnailImage = image.GetThumbnailImage(140, Convert.ToInt32((image.Height / (image.Width / 140))), null, IntPtr.Zero))
{
if (image != null)
{
image.Save(imageFilePath);
thumbnailImage.Save(thumbnailImagePath);
}
else
throw new ArgumentNullException("Image stream is null");
}

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