<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18975"> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I was wondering if there was a simple way to copy the entire visible background to an image_surface.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>My basic idea was before I show a modal dialog was to take a "screen grab" of the entire screen, manipulate this (gray scale, blur, darken etc) paint it and then show the dialog. Once the dialog has been closed everthing needs to return to its previous state.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Any ideas are appreciated</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Michael</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>