Gdiplus::Bitmap to BYTE array?

Question

Here's my attempt (ugly GDI+ and GDI mix...)

// ...
BYTE               pixels[BMP_WIDTH * BMP_HEIGHT * BMP_BPP];
HBITMAP            hBitmap;
Gdiplus::Bitmap    cBitmap(BMP_WIDTH, BMP_HEIGHT, PixelFormat32bppRGB);
Gdiplus::Graphics  cGraphics(&cBitmap);
Gdiplus::Pen       cPen(Gdiplus::Color(255, 255, 0, 0));

cGraphics.DrawRectangle(&cPen, 0, 0, cBitmap.GetWidth() - 1, cBitmap.GetHeight() - 1);

// and here it get's real ugly, I'd like to change that...
cBitmap.GetHBITMAP(Gdiplus::Color(255, 255, 255), &hBitmap);
GetBitmapBits(hBitmap, sizeof(pixels), pixels);
// ...

Someone told me to use LockBits but I really didn't understand how. I tried it, but I failed so I'm not going to post that attempt, too.

Answer 1

Here is how I would do it using GDIPlus Bitmap.LockBits method defined in the header GdiPlusBitmap.h:

Notice that since bitmaps are usually DWORD aligned you may want to discard this unused data that was needed for the alignment, as malat correctly commented..

    Gdiplus::BitmapData bitmapData;
    Gdiplus::Rect rect(0, 0, bitmap.GetWidth(), bitmap.GetHeight());

    //get the bitmap data
    if(Gdiplus::Ok == bitmap.LockBits(
                        &rect, //A rectangle structure that specifies the portion of the Bitmap to lock.
                        Gdiplus::ImageLockModeRead | Gdiplus::ImageLockModeWrite, //ImageLockMode values that specifies the access level (read/write) for the Bitmap.
                        bitmap.GetPixelFormat(),// PixelFormat values that specifies the data format of the Bitmap.
                        &bitmapData //BitmapData that will contain the information about the lock operation.
                        ))
    {
         //get the lenght of the bitmap data in bytes
         int len = bitmapData.Height * std::abs(bitmapData.Stride);

         BYTE* buffer = new BYTE[len];
         memcpy(bitmapData.Scan0, buffer, len);//copy it to an array of BYTEs

         //... 

         //cleanup
         bitmap.UnlockBits(&bitmapData);        
         delete []buffer;
    }