Say cheese! Sometimes it is necessary to export something you can see in your program to a picture file. Maybe you want to simplify creation of documentation or improve bug tracking. WPF has some simple methods to render a control in a picture format like jpeg, png, bitmap etc.

Example:

Here is a small window with some standard controls.

Create Picture of WPF Control
Click "Cheese!" and the following methods will render your interface to a jpg file.

private void WriteFile(string path)
{
byte[] data = null;
data = GetJpgImage(gridMain, 1, 100);
FileStream stream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.OpenOrCreate);
foreach (byte digit in data)
{
stream.WriteByte(digit);
}
 stream.Close();
}

public static byte[] GetJpgImage(UIElement source, double scale, int quality)
{
 Byte[] imageArray;
 double actualHeight = source.RenderSize.Height;
 double actualWidth = source.RenderSize.Width;
 double renderHeight = actualHeight * scale;
 double renderWidth = actualWidth * scale;
 RenderTargetBitmap renderTarget = new RenderTargetBitmap((int)renderWidth, (int)renderHeight, 96, 96, PixelFormats.Pbgra32);
 VisualBrush sourceBrush = new VisualBrush(source);
 DrawingVisual drawingVisual = new DrawingVisual();
 DrawingContext drawingContext = drawingVisual.RenderOpen();
 using (drawingContext)
 {
 drawingContext.PushTransform(new ScaleTransform(scale, scale));
 drawingContext.DrawRectangle(sourceBrush, null, new Rect(new Point(0, 0), new Point(actualWidth, actualHeight)));
 }
 renderTarget.Render(drawingVisual);
 JpegBitmapEncoder jpgEncoder = new JpegBitmapEncoder();
 jpgEncoder.QualityLevel = quality;
 jpgEncoder.Frames.Add(BitmapFrame.Create(renderTarget));
 using (MemoryStream outputStream = new MemoryStream())
 {
 jpgEncoder.Save(outputStream);
 imageArray = outputStream.ToArray();
 }
 return imageArray;
}


Output:

WPFControlPicture2.jpg
Look at this beautiful picture!

Happy Coding.