Programmatically Take Screenshot Using C#

On February 26, 2009 · 7 Comments

To do this you will need to add references to System.Drawing and System.Windows.Forms. Make sure that you have following using statements:

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Drawing.Imaging;
using System.Windows.Forms;

In your method add this code. It will take a screenshot of your primary screen and save it to a file.

Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Width,

                  Screen.PrimaryScreen.Bounds.Height);

Graphics graphics = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap as Image);

graphics.CopyFromScreen(0, 0, 0, 0, bitmap.Size);

bitmap.Save(@"c:\temp\screenshot.bmp", ImageFormat.Bmp);

Tagged with: C# • Code Snippets

7 Responses to Programmatically Take Screenshot Using C#

TJ says:

April 2, 2009 at 1:58 am

Hello!
Is it possible to get a screenshot of a window that is not on the top, i.e. if it is partially hided by another window, without bringing it to the top?
Thanx
TJ
Deepak says:

April 2, 2009 at 6:39 am

Hi TJ,

I have never tried this. But I believe it should be possible maybe using Win32 APIs.
Michael L says:

July 10, 2009 at 2:23 pm

Yes, you can use the win32 api to get a screen shot of any window.
If it’s minimized or hidden, the graphics device will likely be blanked out as the apps don’t generally paint then.

I posted a class to do it here:
http://www.machinegods.com/node/18

Here’s the method of interest without all the pinvoke declarations:

public static Bitmap Get(IntPtr hWnd)
{
WINDOWINFO winInfo = new WINDOWINFO();
bool ret = GetWindowInfo(hWnd, ref winInfo);
if (!ret)
{
return null;
}

int height = winInfo.rcWindow.Height;
int width = winInfo.rcWindow.Width;
if (height == 0 || width == 0) return null;

Graphics frmGraphics = Graphics.FromHwnd(hWnd);
IntPtr hDC = GetWindowDC(hWnd); //gets the entire window
//IntPtr hDC = frmGraphics.GetHdc(); — gets the client area, no menu bars, etc..

System.Drawing.Bitmap tmpBitmap = new System.Drawing.Bitmap(width, height, frmGraphics);
Graphics bmGraphics = Graphics.FromImage(tmpBitmap);
IntPtr bmHdc = bmGraphics.GetHdc();

BitBlt(bmHdc, 0, 0,width, height, hDC, 0, 0, TernaryRasterOperations.SRCCOPY);

bmGraphics.ReleaseHdc(bmHdc);
ReleaseDC(hWnd, hDC);

return tmpBitmap;
}
Deepak says:

July 12, 2009 at 9:58 am

Thank you Michael for the code sample.
Mark says:

April 20, 2010 at 2:03 am

How would you only screen shot part of the screen ?

I would just like to take a screenshot from a portion of the screen.

Thanks !
Michael L says:

May 19, 2010 at 5:38 am

You would just specify a rectangle that wasn’t the full window size when calling bitblt.

so the 0,0,width,height in the line:
BitBlt(bmHdc, 0, 0,width, height, hDC, 0, 0, TernaryRasterOperations.SRCCOPY);

would change to whatever rectangle you needed it to be.
Of course, you’d also want to size the destination image to be the same size.

Here’s the bitblt reference.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd183370(VS.85).aspx
Mark says:

May 20, 2010 at 11:50 am

Wow, Michael , really thanks so much for you’re help. I really appreciate you taking you’re time to explain this.

Cheers.