Capture screenshot of active window?

Question

I am making a screen capturing application and everything is going fine. All I need to do is capture the active window and take a screenshot of this active window. Does anyone know how I can do this?

Answer 1

Here is a snippet to capture either the desktop or the active window. It has no reference to Windows Forms.

public class ScreenCapture
{
    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    private static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();

    [DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, ExactSpelling = true)]
    public static extern IntPtr GetDesktopWindow();

    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
    private struct Rect
    {
        public int Left;
        public int Top;
        public int Right;
        public int Bottom;
    }   

    [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    private static extern IntPtr GetWindowRect(IntPtr hWnd, ref Rect rect);

    public static Image CaptureDesktop()
    {
        return CaptureWindow(GetDesktopWindow());
    }

    public static Bitmap CaptureActiveWindow()
    {
        return CaptureWindow(GetForegroundWindow());
    }

    public static Bitmap CaptureWindow(IntPtr handle)
    {
        var rect = new Rect();
        GetWindowRect(handle, ref rect);
        var bounds = new Rectangle(rect.Left, rect.Top, rect.Right - rect.Left, rect.Bottom - rect.Top);
        var result = new Bitmap(bounds.Width, bounds.Height);

        using (var graphics = Graphics.FromImage(result))
        {
            graphics.CopyFromScreen(new Point(bounds.Left, bounds.Top), Point.Empty, bounds.Size);
        }

        return result;
    }
}

How to capture the whole screen:

var image = ScreenCapture.CaptureDesktop();
image.Save(@"C:\temp\snippetsource.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);

How to capture the active window:

var image = ScreenCapture.CaptureActiveWindow();
image.Save(@"C:\temp\snippetsource.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);

Originally found here: http://www.snippetsource.net/Snippet/158/capture-screenshot-in-c

Answer 2

If you want to use managed code: This will capture any window via the ProcessId.

I used the following to make the window active.

Microsoft.VisualBasic.Interaction.AppActivate(ProcessId);
Threading.Thread.Sleep(20);

I used the print screen to capture a window.

SendKeys.SendWait("%{PRTSC}");
Threading.Thread.Sleep(40);
IDataObject objData = Clipboard.GetDataObject();

Answer 3

ScreenCapture sc = new ScreenCapture();
// capture entire screen, and save it to a file
Image img = sc.CaptureScreen();
// display image in a Picture control named imageDisplay
this.imageDisplay.Image = img;
// capture this window, and save it
sc.CaptureWindowToFile(this.Handle,"C:\\temp2.gif",ImageFormat.Gif);

http://www.developerfusion.com/code/4630/capture-a-screen-shot/

Answer 4

Rectangle bounds = Screen.GetBounds(Point.Empty);
using(Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(bounds.Width, bounds.Height))
{
    using(Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))
    {
         g.CopyFromScreen(Point.Empty, Point.Empty, bounds.Size);
    }
    bitmap.Save("test.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
}

for capturing current window use

 Rectangle bounds = this.Bounds;
 using (Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(bounds.Width, bounds.Height))
 {
    using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))
    {
        g.CopyFromScreen(new Point(bounds.Left,bounds.Top), Point.Empty, bounds.Size);
    }
    bitmap.Save("C://test.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
 }

Answer 5

Based on ArsenMkrt's reply, but this one allows you to capture a control in your form (I'm writing a tool for example that has a WebBrowser control in it and want to capture just its display). Note the use of PointToScreen method:

//Project: WebCapture
//Filename: ScreenshotUtils.cs
//Author: George Birbilis (http://zoomicon.com)
//Version: 20130820

using System.Drawing;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace WebCapture
{
  public static class ScreenshotUtils
  {

    public static Rectangle Offseted(this Rectangle r, Point p)
    {
      r.Offset(p);
      return r;
    }

    public static Bitmap GetScreenshot(this Control c)
    {
      return GetScreenshot(new Rectangle(c.PointToScreen(Point.Empty), c.Size));
    }

    public static Bitmap GetScreenshot(Rectangle bounds)
    {
      Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(bounds.Width, bounds.Height);
      using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))
        g.CopyFromScreen(new Point(bounds.Left, bounds.Top), Point.Empty, bounds.Size);
      return bitmap;
    }

    public const string DEFAULT_IMAGESAVEFILEDIALOG_TITLE = "Save image";
    public const string DEFAULT_IMAGESAVEFILEDIALOG_FILTER = "PNG Image (*.png)|*.png|JPEG Image (*.jpg)|*.jpg|Bitmap Image (*.bmp)|*.bmp|GIF Image (*.gif)|*.gif";

    public const string CUSTOMPLACES_COMPUTER = "0AC0837C-BBF8-452A-850D-79D08E667CA7";
    public const string CUSTOMPLACES_DESKTOP = "B4BFCC3A-DB2C-424C-B029-7FE99A87C641";
    public const string CUSTOMPLACES_DOCUMENTS = "FDD39AD0-238F-46AF-ADB4-6C85480369C7";
    public const string CUSTOMPLACES_PICTURES = "33E28130-4E1E-4676-835A-98395C3BC3BB";
    public const string CUSTOMPLACES_PUBLICPICTURES = "B6EBFB86-6907-413C-9AF7-4FC2ABF07CC5";
    public const string CUSTOMPLACES_RECENT = "AE50C081-EBD2-438A-8655-8A092E34987A";

    public static SaveFileDialog GetImageSaveFileDialog(
      string title = DEFAULT_IMAGESAVEFILEDIALOG_TITLE, 
      string filter = DEFAULT_IMAGESAVEFILEDIALOG_FILTER)
    {
      SaveFileDialog dialog = new SaveFileDialog();

      dialog.Title = title;
      dialog.Filter = filter;


      /* //this seems to throw error on Windows Server 2008 R2, must be for Windows Vista only
      dialog.CustomPlaces.Add(CUSTOMPLACES_COMPUTER);
      dialog.CustomPlaces.Add(CUSTOMPLACES_DESKTOP);
      dialog.CustomPlaces.Add(CUSTOMPLACES_DOCUMENTS);
      dialog.CustomPlaces.Add(CUSTOMPLACES_PICTURES);
      dialog.CustomPlaces.Add(CUSTOMPLACES_PUBLICPICTURES);
      dialog.CustomPlaces.Add(CUSTOMPLACES_RECENT);
      */

      return dialog;
    }

    public static void ShowSaveFileDialog(this Image image, IWin32Window owner = null)
    {
      using (SaveFileDialog dlg = GetImageSaveFileDialog())
        if (dlg.ShowDialog(owner) == DialogResult.OK)
          image.Save(dlg.FileName);
    }

  }
}

Having the Bitmap object you can just call Save on it

private void btnCapture_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  webBrowser.GetScreenshot().Save("C://test.jpg", ImageFormat.Jpeg);
}

The above assumes the GC will grab the bitmap, but maybe it's better to assign the result of someControl.getScreenshot() to a Bitmap variable, then dispose that variable manually when finished, especially if you're doing this grabbing often (say you have a list of webpages you want to load and save screenshots of them):

private void btnCapture_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  Bitmap bitmap = webBrowser.GetScreenshot();
  bitmap.ShowSaveFileDialog();
  bitmap.Dispose(); //release bitmap resources
}

Update:

Now WebCapture tool is ClickOnce-deployed (http://gallery.clipflair.net/WebCapture) from the web (also has nice autoupdate support thanks to ClickOnce) and you can find its source code at http://ClipFlair.codeplex.com.

Answer 6

I assume you use Graphics.CopyFromScreen to get the screenshot.

You can use P/Invoke to GetForegroundWindow (and then get its position and size) to determine which region you need to copy from.