Android change canvas background color without losing any drawings from it

Question

I\'m trying to find a way to set background of canvas with a color picked up from custom color picker without removing any drawings on it. I\'m trying to create an application w

Answer 1

The answers already given to your question are all pointing in the right direction: you do need to separate your background color block and your foreground drawing in separate layers, then merge them before saving the whole of it in a .png file. This is how Adobe Photoshop workflow is designed as well... It does make sense, if we think about it: take for example a software like MsPaint: because it doesn't use layers, it has to rely on stuff like floodfill algorithms to accomplish (albeit in an incomplete way) something remotely similar to a background change...

One way to implement such a thing would be to instantiate 2 Canvas objects backed by 2 different bitmaps. The first Canvas-Bitmap pair would be used for your drawing at the foreground, and the second Canvas-Bitmap pair would be used for your merged-layers drawing (i.e. foreground drawing + background color block). Then the 2nd Bitmap is what will be saved to a .png file when you need it to be saved. This way, our first Canvas-Bitmap pair stores your foreground info, which is not destroyed if a background color change needs to be made. Everytime an operation is made, the layers can be merged into the 2nd Canvas-Bitmap pair so that there is always a Bitmap with the correct content that is ready to be saved at your whim.

Here is a custom View I made so as to clear this methodology up. It implements a simple view used to paint a blue line on the touch-screen using a finger, with a background color changing depending on the X-Y position of said finger so as to demonstrate a background color change without unnecessary code complexity inherent of a complete implementation with a color wheel/menus/inter alia:

package com.epichorns.basicpaint;

import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.Bitmap;
import android.graphics.Canvas;
import android.graphics.Paint;
import android.graphics.Point;
import android.graphics.Paint.Style;
import android.view.View;

public class PaintView extends View{

    Bitmap mMergedLayersBitmap=null; //Note: this bitmap here contains the whole of the drawing (background+foreground) to be saved.
    Canvas mMergedLayersCanvas=null;

    Bitmap mBitmap = null; //bitmap onto which we draw our stuff
    Canvas mCanvas = null; //Main canvas. Will be linked to a .bmp file
    int mBackgroundColor = 0xFF000000; //default background color
    Paint mDefaultPaint = new Paint();

    Paint mDrawPaint = new Paint(); //used for painting example foreground stuff... We draw line segments.
    Point mDrawCoor = new Point(); //used to store last location on our PaintView that was finger-touched

    //Constructor: we instantiate 2 Canvas-Bitmap pairs
    public PaintView(Context context, int width, int height) {
        super(context);
        mMergedLayersBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(width, height, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888); 
        mMergedLayersCanvas = new Canvas(mMergedLayersBitmap);

        mBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(width, height, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
        mCanvas = new Canvas(mBitmap);
    }

    //Change background color
    public void changeColor(int newColor){
        mBackgroundColor = newColor;
        invalidate(); //refresh view: this will indirectly invoke onDraw soon afterwards
    }

    //Called by user of PaintView in order to start a painting "stroke" (finger touching touch-screen): stores the 
    //location of the finger when it first touched the screen
    public void startDraw(int x, int y, int radius, int color){
        mDrawPaint.setColor(color);
        mDrawPaint.setStyle(Style.STROKE);
        mDrawPaint.setStrokeWidth(radius);
        mDrawCoor.x = x;
        mDrawCoor.y = y;        
    }

    //Called by user of PaintView when finger touching touch-screen is moving (must be called after a startDraw, 
    //as the latter initializes a couple of necessary things)
    public void continueDraw(int x, int y){
        mCanvas.drawLine(mDrawCoor.x, mDrawCoor.y, x, y, mDrawPaint);
        mDrawCoor.x = x;
        mDrawCoor.y = y;
        invalidate(); //refresh view: this will indirectly invoke onDraw soon afterwards
    }

    //Merge the foreground Canvas-Bitmap with a solid background color, then stores this in the 2nd Canvas-Bitmap pair.
    private void mergeLayers(){
        mMergedLayersCanvas.drawColor(mBackgroundColor);
        mMergedLayersCanvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, 0, 0, mDefaultPaint);
    }

    @Override
    public void onDraw(Canvas canvas){
        mergeLayers();
        canvas.drawBitmap(mMergedLayersBitmap, 0, 0, mDefaultPaint);
    }

}

In order to test this view, here is a test Activity that uses the PaintView class. Both of those files are self-sufficient in an Android project, so that you can test it on your real device without hassle:

package com.epichorns.basicpaint;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.graphics.Color;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.util.Log;
import android.view.Display;
import android.view.MotionEvent;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.LinearLayout;


import com.epichorns.basicpaint.PaintView;
public class BasicPaintActivity extends Activity {
    PaintView mPaintView=null;
    LinearLayout mL = null;
    boolean mIsDrawing=false;
    int mBackgroundColor = 0xFF000000;

    /** Called when the activity is first created. */
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

        Display display = getWindowManager().getDefaultDisplay();       
        final float dispWidth = (float)display.getWidth();
        final float dispHeight = (float)display.getHeight();

        mPaintView = new PaintView(this, display.getWidth(), display.getHeight());    
        mPaintView.changeColor(mBackgroundColor);
        mPaintView.setOnTouchListener(new View.OnTouchListener(){

            public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {

            if(event.getAction()==MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN){
                    mPaintView.startDraw((int)event.getX(), (int)event.getY(), 6, 0x806060FF);              
                    mIsDrawing=true;
                    return true;
                }
                else if(event.getAction()==MotionEvent.ACTION_UP){
                    mIsDrawing=false;
                    return true;
                }
                else if(event.getAction()==MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE){
                    if(mIsDrawing){

                        //To demonstrate background change, change background color depending on X-Y position
                        int r = (int)(255f*event.getX()/dispWidth);
                        int g = (int)(255f*event.getY()/dispHeight);
                        mBackgroundColor = Color.argb(0xFF, r,g, 0x00);
                        Log.d("DEBUG1", "Color channels: (r, g) = ("+String.valueOf(r)+", "+String.valueOf(g)+")");
                        mPaintView.changeColor(mBackgroundColor);

                        //now, draw stuff where finger was dragging...
                        mPaintView.continueDraw((int)event.getX(), (int)event.getY());
                        return true;
                    }
                    else{
                        return false;
                    }

                }

                return false;
            }

        });

        setContentView(mPaintView);
    }




}