Can I get a byte[] from a BitmapImage in Silverlight?

Question

I'm trying to pass some representation of an image back and forth between Silverlight and a WCF service. If possible I'd like to pass a System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapImage, since that would mean the client doesn't have to do any conversion.

However, at some point I need to store this image in a database, meaning the image representation must be able to convert to and from byte[]. I can create a BitmapImage from a byte[] by reading the array into a MemoryStream and using BitmapImage.SetSource. But I can't seem to find a way to convert the other way - from BitmapImage to byte[]. Am I missing something obvious here?

If it helps at all, the conversion code could run on the server, i.e. it doesn't need to be Silverlight-safe.

Answer 1

Try using CopyPixels. You can copy the bitmap data to a byte array. However, I am honestly not sure what the format of the pixels would be...its probably dependent upon the kind of image that was originally loaded.