Features

Easy-to-use Windows Runtime API

• Available from .NET and C++
• Supports Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1

Immediate mode 2D graphics rendering with GPU acceleration

• Implemented as a layer on top of Direct2D, DirectImage, and DirectWrite
• Interop to and from underlying types, so you can mix & match Win2D with native D2D

Bitmap graphics

• Load, save, and draw bitmap images
• Render to texture
• Use bitmaps as opacity masks
• Sprite batch API for efficiently drawing large numbers of bitmaps
• Use block compressed bitmap formats to save memory
• Load, save, and draw virtual bitmaps, which can be larger than the maximum GPU texture size and are automatically split into tiles

Vector graphics

• Draw primitive shapes (lines, rectangles, circles, etc.) or arbitrarily complex geometry
• Fill shapes using solid colors, image brushes, or linear and radial gradients
• Draw lines of any width with flexible stroke styles (dotted, dashed, etc.)
• High quality antialiasing
• Rich geometry manipulation (union, intersect, compute point on path, tessellate, etc.)
• Clip drawing to arbitrary geometric regions
• Capture drawing operations in command lists for later replay
• Rasterize ink strokes (from a stylus)

Powerful image processing effects

• Blurs
• Blends
• Color adjustments (brightness, contrast, exposure, highlights & shadows, etc.)
• Filters (convolve, edge detection, emboss, sharpen)
• Lighting
• Custom pixel shaders
• And many more...

Text

• Fully internationalized Unicode text rendering
• Text layouts can be drawn, measured, or hit-tested against
• Convert text outlines to geometry
• Enumerate fonts and query their metrics
• Draw or manipulate individual glyph runs to create custom text layouts

UI integration

• XAML CanvasControl make it easy to get up and running
• Can also create advanced things like owner-draw XAML controls
• XAML CanvasAnimatedControl provides Update/Draw game loop programming model
• XAML CanvasVirtualControl for drawing to very large virtualized surfaces
• Draw onto Windows.UI.Composition drawing surfaces and swapchains
• Can also draw directly to a CoreWindow
• Printing