The code below demonstrates several features of working with System.Drawing.Image object together with LINQ to SQL, which maps a byte[] to the System.Data.Linq.Binary type.

In addition, the code also demonstrates how to convert between byte[] and System.Drawing.Image. Hope you find it useful.

-- Script Date: 22-11-2009 15:03  - Generated by ExportSqlCe version 2.2.0.3
CREATE TABLE [Images] (
	[ImageName] nvarchar(100) NOT NULL,
	[Image] image NULL
);
GO

ALTER TABLE [Images] ADD PRIMARY KEY ([ImageName]);
GO

CREATE UNIQUE INDEX [UQ__Images__000000000000000A] ON [Images] ([ImageName] ASC);
GO

- thank to Georgi Yankov for inspring this blog entry!

using System;
using System.Drawing;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Windows.Forms;

namespace StoreImagesToSqlCe
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void buttonStoreImageToDb_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // Open the DataContext
            Database1 db = new Database1("Data Source=Database1.sdf");
            try
            {
                // Convert System.Drawing.Image to a byte[]
                byte[] file_byte = ImageToByteArray(pictureBox1.Image);
                // Create a System.Data.Linq.Binary - this is what an "image" column is mapped to
                System.Data.Linq.Binary file_binary = new System.Data.Linq.Binary(file_byte);
                Images img = new Images
                {
                    Image = file_binary,
                    ImageName = "Erik testing "
                };
                db.Images.InsertOnSubmit(img);
            }
            finally
            {
                // Save
                db.SubmitChanges();
            }
        }

        private void buttonRetireveImageFromDb_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            // Open the DataContext
            Database1 db = new Database1("Data Source=Database1.sdf");

            // Get as single image from the database
            var img = (from image in db.Images
                       where image.ImageName == "Erik testing"
                       select image).Single();
            // Convert the byte[] to an System.Drawing.Image
            pictureBox1.Image = ByteArrayToImage(img.Image.ToArray());
        }

        private byte[] ImageToByteArray(System.Drawing.Image imageIn)
        {
            using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
            {
                imageIn.Save(ms, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Gif);
                return ms.ToArray();
            }
        }

        public Image ByteArrayToImage(byte[] byteArrayIn)
        {
            using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(byteArrayIn))
            {
                Image returnImage = Image.FromStream(ms);
                return returnImage;
            }
        }

    }
}

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