How to paste a transparent image from the clipboard in a C# winforms app?
Chrome copies the image to the clipboard in a 24bpp format. Which turns the transparency into black. You can get a 32bpp format out of the clipboard but that requires handling the DIB format. There's no built-in support for that in System.Drawing, you need a little helper function that make the conversion:
private Image GetImageFromClipboard() {
if (Clipboard.GetDataObject() == null) return null;
if (Clipboard.GetDataObject().GetDataPresent(DataFormats.Dib)) {
var dib = ((System.IO.MemoryStream)Clipboard.GetData(DataFormats.Dib)).ToArray();
var width = BitConverter.ToInt32(dib, 4);
var height = BitConverter.ToInt32(dib, 8);
var bpp = BitConverter.ToInt16(dib, 14);
if (bpp == 32) {
var gch = GCHandle.Alloc(dib, GCHandleType.Pinned);
Bitmap bmp = null;
try {
var ptr = new IntPtr((long)gch.AddrOfPinnedObject() + 40);
bmp = new Bitmap(width, height, width * 4, System.Drawing.Imaging.PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb, ptr);
return new Bitmap(bmp);
}
finally {
gch.Free();
if (bmp != null) bmp.Dispose();
}
}
}
return Clipboard.ContainsImage() ? Clipboard.GetImage() : null;
}
Sample usage:
protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) {
using (var bmp = GetImageFromClipboard()) {
if (bmp != null) e.Graphics.DrawImage(bmp, 0, 0);
}
}
Which produced this screen-shot with the form's BackgroundImage property set to a stock bitmap: