Drawing QImage on a QPainter which has inverted y-axis - qt

Question

I have a scene with an inverted y-axis. Everything is correctly drawn except QImages.
I use drawIage() as:
QRectF aWorldRect = ...
QRectF anImageRect = QRectF(0, 0, theQImage.width(), theQImage.height())
thePainter->drawImage(aWorldRect, theQImage, anImageRect;
I get undefined graphics outside (to the top of) where the image should be displayed. This is normal because y-axis is inverted. So I expected something like that may fix the issue:
QRectF anImageRect = QRectF(0, 0, imgWidth, -imgHeight)
It has the same effect. If I do aWorldRect = aWorldRect.noralized() before calling drawImage(), I get the image in the correct rectangle but mirrored so I did aQImage = aQImage.mirrored(). Now the image is correctly displayed in the correct rectangle
I consider this a workaround which I don't like to keep. So, can someone tell me what should be done to get the image displayed, the right way?
Update
Here I put a minimal sample of my problem that is ready to compile:
Update 2014-04-09 10:05 EET
Updated the sample code little bit to make really work using the workaround
#include <QtGui>
const int WIDTH = 640;
const int HEIGHT = 480;
class View : public QGraphicsView
{
protected:
void drawBackground(QPainter *p, const QRectF & rect)
{
QImage img = QImage("/usr/share/backgrounds/images/stone_bird.jpg"); // or any other
/* The next three lines makes everything displayed correctly but
should be considered a workaround */
/* I ignore the rect that is passed to the function on purpose */
QRectF imageRect = QRectF(QPointF(0, 0), QPointF(img.width(), img.height()));
QRectF theSceneRect = sceneRect().normalized();
p->drawImage(theSceneRect, img.mirrored(), imageRect);
}
};
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QApplication a(argc, argv);
View w;
/* I don't want to change the code below */
w.setScene(new QGraphicsScene(QRectF(QPointF(0, HEIGHT), QPointF(WIDTH, 0))));
w.scale(1, -1);
w.scene()->addLine(0, HEIGHT, WIDTH, 0);
w.showMaximized();
return a.exec();
}

Answer 1

The approach of reversing the Y coordinate value is right but the implementation was faulty.
QRectF's documentation shows that it takes (x, y, width, height). Giving height as negative makes little sense. Instead try the other constructor which takes topLeft and bottomRight.
QRectF anImageRect(QPointF(0.0f, -imgHeight), QPointF(imageWidth, 0.0f));
EDIT:
It seems that the only drawings like line, arc, etc. are affected by the scale (1, -1) transform you set on the view. drawImage continues to render upside down due to the scale set. The simple fix is to set the scale back to (1, -1). Here's the updated code:
void drawBackground(QPainter *p, const QRectF & rect)
{
QImage img = QImage("/usr/share/backgrounds/images/stone_bird.jpg");
// backup the current transform set (which has the earlier scale of (1, -1))
const QTransform oldTransform = p->transform();
// set the transform back to identity to make the Y axis go from top to bottom
p->setTransform(QTransform());
// draw
QRectF theSceneRect = sceneRect().normalized();
p->drawImage(theSceneRect, img);
// revert back to the earlier transform
p->setTransform(oldTransform);
}

Answer 2

Updated on 2014-04-14 14:35 EET
I could finally solve the problem reliably by replacing the two lines
QRectF theSceneRect = sceneRect().normalized();
p->drawImage(theSceneRect, img.mirrored(), imageRect);
of my question to
QRectF theSceneRect = sceneRect(); // Not normalized. It is no more workaround :)
qreal x = theSceneRect.x();
qreal y = theSceneRect.y();
qreal w = theSceneRect.width();
qreal h = theSceneRect.height();
qreal sx = imageRect.x();
qreal sy = imageRect.y();
qreal sw = imageRect.width();
qreal sh = imageRect.height();
p->translate(x, y);
p->scale(w / sw, h / sh);
p->setBackgroundMode(Qt::TransparentMode);
p->setRenderHint(QPainter::Antialiasing, p->renderHints() &
QPainter::SmoothPixmapTransform);
QBrush brush(img);
p->setBrush(brush);
p->setPen(Qt::NoPen);
p->setBrushOrigin(QPointF(-sx, -sy));
p->drawRect(QRectF(0, 0, sw, sh));
p->restore();
This is inspired by the implementation of the QPainter::drawImage() which is not reliable in such cases due to many if statements handling rectangles with negative values of width or height.
It would be better if I made the solution in another function but I kept it this way to be more compatible with the code in my question.