Writing text to images

[adi rusu]

Hello. I am trying to write the text given by the user onto an image and save the image. If i save it once using the Save method of the Bitmap object, it works. But if i try again, i get an exception because the file is locked. I have to restart the application to save the file again. Does anybody know a solution? Thanks

[J4amieC]

Yes, make sure you Dispose of any Bitmap or File you are using!

[adi rusu]

I did that. Here is my code: Font f = new Font("Arial", 48); Bitmap b = new Bitmap("some path"); Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(b); g.DrawString(textBox.Text, f, Brushes.White, 50, 50); g.Flush(); try { b.Save("result path", ImageFormat.Jpeg); b.Dispose(); b = null; pictureBox.Image = Image.FromFile("result path"); } catch (Exception ex) { MessageBox.Show(ex.Message); //Displays "A generic error occured in GDI+" } I wrote the message on the forum after i tried this code. So Dispose doesn't really work as I had expected. Any other ideas?

[Luc Pattyn]

Hi, images that get created from a file, lock that file for as long as the Image exists. This holds true for Bitmap b=new Bitmap(path) as well as pictureBox.Image = Image.FromFile(path). As long as your PictureBox is showing an image, loaded from a file like that, you won't be able to delete or modify that file. There are basically two solutions: 1. load the image, copy it to a second image immediately (as in new Bitmap(image)), and dispose of the first image; 2. create a FileStream to the file, and load the image using FromStream, this does not lock the file that your stream refers to.

FileStream stream=new FileStream(fileSpec, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
Image localImage2=Image.FromStream(stream);

:)

Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [My Articles]

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