PdfViewer selection rectangle

[Toby]

Hi, I have a need for the user to be able to select an rectangular area from a PDF page from within the PDF viewer and then to extract this area as an image. Is this possible? If so how?

[Dinko | Tech Support Engineer]

Hi Toby,

Thank you for your interest in our RadPdfViewer control.

I will start with that the control does not provide such functionality of the box. However, you could try to implement custom code to implement your requirements. Here is what I have in mind.:

• How to Get the Context Menu's Coordinates and Draw a Rectangle in PdfViewer: You can start from here. This KB article demonstrates how to draw a rectangle on mouse click position with a given width and height via the context menu. Now you could extend the approach depending on how the user needs to draw the rectangle.
• Then you can export the page to an image. You can check the Export to image help article.
• The last step is to crop the part where the rectangle was drawn. You can check this StackOverflow thread or search for a similar approach: How do I crop an image using C#?

I think the main obstacle will be to transfer the correct x,y starting point of the drawn rectangle to the image/bitmap image coordinates. I am afraid that I don't have a complete solution for your scenario, but I think the above resources will be a good starting point.

I hope that you find my reply helpful.

Regards,
Dinko | Tech Support Engineer
Progress Telerik