c# graphics creation

Question

I have some code that is used to programmatically create a Document to send to the printer. It goes something like this:

private void pd_PrintPage(object sender, System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs ev) 
{      
      ev.Graphics.DrawImage(pictureBox1.Image, 50, 100);

      string drawToday="Date      : "+strToday;
      string drawPolicyNo="Policy # : " + strPolicyNo;
      string drawUser="User     : " + strUser;
      Font drawFont=new Font("Arial",30);
      SolidBrush drawBrush=new SolidBrush(Color.Black);
      PointF drawPointToday=new Point(50,400);
      PointF drawPointPolicyNo=new Point(50,450);
      PointF drawPointUser=new Point(50,500);
      ev.Graphics.DrawString(drawToday,drawFont,drawBrush,drawPointToday);
      ev.Graphics.DrawString(drawPolicyNo,drawFont,drawBrush,drawPointPolicyNo);
      ev.Graphics.DrawString(drawUser,drawFont,drawBrush,drawPointUser);
}

Its effective code, but now I need to do the same procedure but instead write it to an image file so that it can be sent to a browser and printed from there. It should be relatively simple to reuse this code, but I am getting hung up, unfortunately, on what drawing surface to use in replacement of the PrintPageEventArgument.

Thanks

Edit: THanks I get that I just need another Graphics object, but the Graphics object by itself does not have a public constructor, so what I am looking for is a suggestion on what object I need to substatiate to be able to create a Graphics object to draw on. I thought perhaps bitmap? Bitmaps are of course pixel based instead of point based so I was not sure that this is the best medium to use.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly you could simply break out the code from your event handler into another method accepting a Graphics object as parameter:

private void Print(Graphics g)
{
    g.DrawImage(pictureBox1.Image, 50, 100);

    string drawToday="Date      : "+strToday;
    string drawPolicyNo="Policy # : " + strPolicyNo;
    string drawUser="User     : " + strUser;
    Font drawFont=new Font("Arial",30);
    SolidBrush drawBrush=new SolidBrush(Color.Black);
    PointF drawPointToday=new Point(50,400);
    PointF drawPointPolicyNo=new Point(50,450);
    PointF drawPointUser=new Point(50,500);
    g.DrawString(drawToday,drawFont,drawBrush,drawPointToday);
    g.DrawString(drawPolicyNo,drawFont,drawBrush,drawPointPolicyNo);
    g.DrawString(drawUser,drawFont,drawBrush,drawPointUser);
}

And then call that method from your event handler:

private void pd_PrintPage(object sender, System.Drawing.Printing.PrintPageEventArgs ev) 
{      
      Print(ev.Graphics);
}

Then you can reuse the same method for printing the output to any other Graphics instance:

using (Bitmap img = new Bitmap(width, height))
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(img))
{
    Print(g);
    img.Save(fileName);
}

Answer 2

To write your graphics object to an image file you can do something like this:

public void SaveImage(Graphics surface)
{
  Bitmap bmp = new Bitmap(50, 100, surface);
  bmp.Save("filename.png", ImageFormat.Png);
}

You can choose other formats from the ImageFormat class such as JPG, BMP, etc.