How to paste a transparent image from the clipboard in a C# winforms app?

Question

Note: This question is about pasting from the clipboard, not copying to the clipboard. There are several posts about copying to the clipboard, but couldn\'t find one that ad

Answer 1

Chrome copies the image to the clipboard in a 24bpp format. Which turns the transparency into black. You can get a 32bpp format out of the clipboard but that requires handling the DIB format. There's no built-in support for that in System.Drawing, you need a little helper function that make the conversion:

    private Image GetImageFromClipboard() {
        if (Clipboard.GetDataObject() == null) return null;
        if (Clipboard.GetDataObject().GetDataPresent(DataFormats.Dib)) {
            var dib = ((System.IO.MemoryStream)Clipboard.GetData(DataFormats.Dib)).ToArray();
            var width = BitConverter.ToInt32(dib, 4);
            var height = BitConverter.ToInt32(dib, 8);
            var bpp = BitConverter.ToInt16(dib, 14);
            if (bpp == 32) {
                var gch = GCHandle.Alloc(dib, GCHandleType.Pinned);
                Bitmap bmp = null;
                try {
                    var ptr = new IntPtr((long)gch.AddrOfPinnedObject() + 40);
                    bmp = new Bitmap(width, height, width * 4, System.Drawing.Imaging.PixelFormat.Format32bppArgb, ptr);
                    return new Bitmap(bmp);
                }
                finally {
                    gch.Free();
                    if (bmp != null) bmp.Dispose();
                }
            }
        }
        return Clipboard.ContainsImage() ? Clipboard.GetImage() : null;
    }

Sample usage:

    protected override void OnPaint(PaintEventArgs e) {
        using (var bmp = GetImageFromClipboard()) {
            if (bmp != null) e.Graphics.DrawImage(bmp, 0, 0);
        }
    }

Which produced this screen-shot with the form's BackgroundImage property set to a stock bitmap: