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Programmatically Take Screenshot Using C#

February 26th, 2009 | 7 Comments | Posted in Code Snippets

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);
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7 Responses to “Programmatically Take Screenshot Using C#”

  1. TJ Says:
     April 2nd, 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

  2. Deepak Says:
     April 2nd, 2009 at 6:39 am

    Hi TJ,

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

  3. Michael L Says:
     July 10th, 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;
    }

  4. Deepak Says:
     July 12th, 2009 at 9:58 am

    Thank you Michael for the code sample.

  5. Mark Says:
     April 20th, 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 !

  6. Michael L Says:
     May 19th, 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

  7. Mark Says:
     May 20th, 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.

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