Working with Graphics?

[pungy]

VB 6 -Enterprise Edition OS-Windows XP Professional SP2

I need to write an application that will allow some graphic features such as: scaling (changing it's size), rotate, crop, etc--maybe some more robust features like emboss, change resolution,etc.

Another thing I want to do is to "join" different graphics to make a bigger one. For example: let's say I had 3 graphics. Graphic-1 had the letter "S",Graphic-2 had the letter "a", and Graphic-3 had the letter "m". A new graphic, Graphic-4 can be created that is a combination of others. Graphic-4 would look like "Sam".

Before you say, just type the letters "Sam", this was jst an example. The graphics 1,2, and 3 can contain graphic images. Another example: graphic-5 can contain "(", Graphic-6 = ")", and Graphic-7 = "*". A new graphic, Graphic-8 may look like this: "(**Sam**)". A combination of using Graphics 5,7,7,1,2,3,7,7,6. Each graphic can be set up using a pre-defined key.

Can this be done in VB and if so how? If you can help, please do so. If you know of any examples, please send me the link.

Thanks,
Sam

 

[AndyGroom]

VB can do the kinds of graphics work you've mentioned but not very well. For example, there are API functions for resize and code examples for rotate but none of them would anti-alias the resulting image - which is what people expect to see nowadays.

Your best bet would be to use a third party graphics library. I use one from LeadTools

http://www.leadtools.com

but their cheapest SDK for doing what you want is $495. I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives out there.

- Andy
___________________________________________________________________
If you think nobody cares you're alive, try missing a couple of mortgage payments

 

[vb5prgrmr]

Check out BitBlt API in help and at the bottom see Bitmap Functions. Give a good search here for some of the bitmap functions you will find. Then hop on over to

http://www.vbforums.com

and search both the forum and the code bank for those same things if you cannot find them here.



Good Luck

 

[strongm]

>Can this be done in VB

Sure - and VB's ability to make API calls means that we can do some quite sophisticated stuff using GDI, GDI+ and even DirectDraw. Thiose are all key terms that you should now be able to use to seearch both this forum (and the rest of the Internet) for examples of their use from VB