Capture Image in WPF and print the captured image:

In the previous article we have learned how to print WPF visual and fit into the printing page. Now you would learn how to capture the image in WPF and print that image to the printer in a page fit.

Steps to capture the image and print:

• Add Reference the ReachFramework.dll.
• Add reference of the System.Printing.dll.
• Get the capabilities of the selected printer.
• Calculate the scaling of the printer with wrt to visual to be printed.
• Capture the image of the visual Element.
• Create the new visual.
• Create the Drawing context from the new visual.
• Render the image to the drawing context.
• Close the drawing context, now visual contain the image captured.
• Print the new visual.

Code in the btnPrintCaptureImage_OnClick handler.

PrintDialog printDlg = new System.Windows.Controls.PrintDialog();

if (printDlg.ShowDialog() == true)

   {

      //get selected printer capabilities

      System.Printing.PrintCapabilities capabilities = printDlg.PrintQueue.GetPrintCapabilities(printDlg.PrintTicket);

      //get scale of the print wrt to screen of WPF visual

      double scale = Math.Min(capabilities.PageImageableArea.ExtentWidth / this.ActualWidth,

                    capabilities.PageImageableArea.ExtentHeight /

                    this.ActualHeight);

     //get the size of the printer page

     Size sz = new Size(capabilities.PageImageableArea.ExtentWidth, capabilities.PageImageableArea.ExtentHeight);

     //Capture the image of the visual in the same size as Printing page.

     RenderTargetBitmap bmp = new RenderTargetBitmap((int)this.ActualWidth, (int)this.ActualHeight, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Pbgra32);

    bmp.Render(this);

    //create new visual which would be initialized by image

    DrawingVisual vis = new DrawingVisual();

  //create a drawing context so that image can be rendered to print

  DrawingContext dc = vis.RenderOpen();

  dc.DrawImage(bmp,new System.Windows.Rect(sz));

  dc.Close();

 //now print the image visual to printer to fit on the one page.

 printDlg.PrintVisual(vis, "Image Fit to Page WPF Print");

}

Summary: Now, we have idea how to capture image and print that captured image in WPF.

# 1 Annonymous Wrote on 10/14/2008

This doesn't preserve vector data though, so you loose a big advantage of WPF over traditional bitmap based graphics.

# 2 Pankaj Wrote on 10/14/2008

Thanks for pointing out the issue. Could you share your solution?

# 3 Annonymous Wrote on 05/14/2009

thanks !

# 4 Annonymous Wrote on 06/25/2009

use a viewbox to scale, possibly