Just a Quickie...
Recently I came across the KMP Player software, and was looking over some of the graphic elements (and if you want to see some really good graphics work, I recommend you check it out). One of the elements that I need for a project was a simple glowing button control, used for the player controls, nothing too fancy, just an image that changes color and glows when hovered.
Getting an image to change color is rather trivial, it is done by modifying the color matrices of an ImageAttribute
:
private void DrawColoredImage(Graphics g, Image img, Rectangle bounds, Color clr)
{
using (ImageAttributes ia = new ImageAttributes())
{
ColorMatrix cm = new ColorMatrix();
cm.Matrix00 = ParseColor(clr.R);
cm.Matrix11 = ParseColor(clr.G);
cm.Matrix22 = ParseColor(clr.B);
cm.Matrix33 = ParseColor(clr.A);
cm.Matrix44 = 1f;
ia.SetColorMatrix(cm);
g.DrawImage(img, bounds, 0, 0, img.Width,
img.Height, GraphicsUnit.Pixel, ia);
}
}
The ParseColor
in the example code simply converts byte
to float
values.
Getting the glow effect is also done using the ImageAttributes
class. The image is first inflated, then the color palette and Alpha values are altered, then the clean image is drawn overtop. All this is done by first drawing the control elements into a buffer bitmap:
private void DrawButton()
{
if (this.Image == null)
return;
Rectangle bounds = new Rectangle(0, 0, this.Width, this.Height);
Rectangle imageBounds = GetImageBounds(bounds, this.Image);
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(_bmpBuffer))
{
...
}
using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromHwnd(this.Handle))
DrawImage(g, _bmpBuffer, bounds);
}
The control comes with most of the properties exposed, like various color states, and optional focus mask and border. Here's a list of the properties:
Checked
: Checkbox state CheckedBorderColor
: The checked border color CheckStyle
: Checkbox style FocusedMask
: Draw a focused mask ImageDisabledColor
: The image disabled color ImageFocusedColor
: The image focused color ImageGlowColor
: The border glow color ImageHoverColor
: The image hover color ImagePressedColor
: The image pressed color ImageGlowFactor
: Glow factor depth FocusOnHover
: Focus on button hover
History
- 24th February, 2010: Initial post
- 27th March, 2010: Article screen shot and source code
Network and programming specialist. Started in C, and have learned about 14 languages since then. Cisco programmer, and lately writing a lot of C# and WPF code, (learning Java too). If I can dream it up, I can probably put it to code. My software company, (VTDev), is on the verge of releasing a couple of very cool things.. keep you posted.