Yeah, you can't just return a Bitmap for a bunch of reasons. What you'll
need to do is get the bytes of the bitmap and return them using Base64 encoding.
It might look a little something like this:

<codeSnippet language="C#">
[WebMethod]
[return:XmlElement("imageData", DataType="base64Binary")]
public byte[] CreateImage()
{
 using(Bitmap image = new Bitmap(100, 100))
 using(Graphics imageGraphics = Graphics.FromImage(image))
 {
   imageGraphics.FillRectangle(Brushes.Red, 0, 0, image.Width, image.Height);
   imageGraphics.DrawRectangle(Pens.Blue, 0, 0, image.Width, image.Height);
               
   using(MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream())      
   {
     image.Save(stream, ImageFormat.Png);

     stream.Flush();

     return stream.ToArray();
   }
 }
}
</codeSnippet>

As you can see I've decorated the result of the method with an XmlElementAttribute
with the DataType base64Binary which instructs the XmlSerializer to serialize
the byte array into an element named "imageData" whose contents is base64
encoded. This is not the most efficient way to acheive this since you need
to encode/decode the bytes, but is probably the most cross platform compatible.
If you're using WSE on both ends you might want to consider using DIME, which
will allow you to basically send just the raw bytes, but that's something
I'm not all that experienced with personally.

HTH,
Drew

Hi,

I saw this question by accident, does this sample I once made fit the
problem?
As database is a very easy dataset file used on the serverside.

\\\needs a picturebox and 4 buttons on a windowform
Private ds As New DataSet
Private abyt() As Byte
Private fo As New OpenFileDialog
Private sf As New SaveFileDialog
Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
   ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
       'Reading a picture from disk and put it in a bytearray
       If fo.ShowDialog = DialogResult.OK Then
           Dim fs As New IO.FileStream(fo.FileName, _
          IO.FileMode.Open)
           Dim br As New IO.BinaryReader(fs)
           abyt = br.ReadBytes(CInt(fs.Length))
           br.Close()
           'just to show the sample without a fileread error
           Dim ms As New IO.MemoryStream(abyt)
           Me.PictureBox1.Image = Image.FromStream(ms)
       End If
End Sub
Private Sub Button2_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal _
   e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button2.Click
       'writing a picture from a bytearray to disk
       If sf.ShowDialog = DialogResult.OK Then
           Dim fs As New IO.FileStream(sf.FileName, _
               IO.FileMode.CreateNew)
           Dim bw As New IO.BinaryWriter(fs)
           bw.Write(abyt)
           bw.Close()
       End If
End Sub
Private Sub Button3_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal _
   e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button3.Click
       'writing a bytearray to a webservice dataset
       Dim ws As New localhost.DataBaseUpdate
       ws.SetDataset(abyt)
End Sub
Private Sub Button4_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, _
   ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button4.Click
       'reading a picture from a webservice dataset
       Dim ws As New localhost.DataBaseUpdate
       abyt = ws.GetByte
       Dim ms As New IO.MemoryStream(abyt)
       Me.PictureBox1.Image = Image.FromStream(ms)
   End Sub
End Class
////
\\\\Webservice
<WebMethod()> _
   Public Function GetByte() As Byte()
       Dim ds As New DataSet
       ds.ReadXml("C:\wsblob.xml")
       Return CType(ds.Tables(0).Rows(0)(0), Byte())
   End Function
   <WebMethod()> _
      Public Sub SetDataset(ByVal abyte As Byte())
       Dim ds As New DataSet
       ds.Tables.Add(New DataTable("Photo"))
       ds.Tables(0).Columns.Add(New DataColumn("Sample"))
       ds.Tables(0).Columns(0).DataType = GetType(System.Byte())
       ds.Tables(0).Rows.Add(ds.Tables(0).NewRow)
       ds.Tables(0).Rows(0)(0) = abyte
       ds.WriteXml("C:\wsblob.xml", XmlWriteMode.WriteSchema)
   End Sub
////

I hope this helps a little bit?

Cor
"rlcavebmg" <rlcavebmg@discussions.microsoft.com>