Drawing Libraries

The previous example demonstrated how we can create a managed accessor for a WriteableBitmap. But it worked only because we used a pixel format that happens to have built-in support also in KGy SOFT Drawing Libraries. In fact, the libraries provide support for any custom pixel format. The CreateBitmapData methods have several overloads that allow you to specify a custom pixel format along with a couple of delegates to be called when pixels are read or written:

// Gray8 format has no built-in support
var bitmap = new WriteableBitmap(width, height, dpiX, dpiY, PixelFormats.Gray8, null);

// But we can specify how to use it
var customPixelFormat = new PixelFormatInfo { BitsPerPixel = 8, Grayscale = true };
Func<ICustomBitmapDataRow, int, Color32> getPixel =
    (row, x) => Color32.FromGray(row.UnsafeGetRefAs<byte>(x));
Action<ICustomBitmapDataRow, int, Color32> setPixel =
    (row, x, c) => c.Blend(row.BitmapData.BackColor).GetBrightness();

// Now we specify also a dispose callback to be executed when the returned instance is disposed:
return BitmapDataFactory.CreateBitmapData(
    bitmap.BackBuffer, new Size(bitmap.PixelWidth, bitmap.PixelHeight), bitmap.BackBufferStride,
    customPixelFormat, getPixel, setPixel,
    disposeCallback: () =>
    {
        bitmap.AddDirtyRect(new Int32Rect(0, 0, bitmap.PixelWidth, bitmap.PixelHeight));
        bitmap.Unlock();
    });

💡 Tip: See also the Xamarin and MAUI examples that demonstrate how to create a bitmap data for SkiaSharp’s SKBitmap type as if there was no dedicated package for SkiaSharp.

Note that there are different overloads for indexed formats where you have to specify how to read/write a palette index. Please also note that these delegates work with 32-bit color structures (just like usual GetPixel/SetPixel) so wider formats will be quantized into the ARGB8888 color space (or BGRA8888, using the alternative terminology) when getting/setting pixels but this is how regular formats work, too. Anyway, you can always access the actual underlying data of whatever format by the aforementioned IReadableBitmapDataRow.ReadRaw and IWritableBitmapDataRow.WriteRaw methods.