Assigning parent to image stored in Image Array

Question

I am storing images in an Array, which I am going to display on top of each other (using transparency) in an image box, but how do I set the parent of each image (to enable transparency)?

Is it something along the lines of

images[1].parent = images[0];

Note, the above code does not work hence the question.

Answer 1

Wrap you images in a class with the property or properties you need (Bitmap is sealed, so you can't just inherit from it):

public class MyImageWrapper 
{
    public MyImageWrapper Parent { get; set; }
    public Image Image { get; set; }

    public MyImageWrapper(Image i, MyImageWrapper parent = null)
    {
        Parent = parent;
        Image = i;
    }
}

Now you can change your array of Image to an array MyImageWrapper and you can do things like this:

Images[1].Parent = Images[0]

Of course, you need to remember to access the wrapped image before you try and assign it to a control that expects an Image, for example:

pictureBox1.Image = Images[0].Image;

And to originally load your images, you would:

images[0] = new ImageWrapper(Image.FromFile("MyImage.png"));