Managing Secrets in .NET Console Apps

Sometimes your code needs to work with secrets that you don’t want to risk accidentally leaking on the internet. There are many strategies for solving this problem, and here I share my preferred approach. I see a lot of articles about how to manage user secrets in ASP.NET and other web applications, but not many focusing on console or desktop applications.

User Secrets in C# Applications

• The dotnet user-secrets command manages secrets

• Secrets are stored as plain-text key/value pairs in JSON format in %AppData%\Microsoft\UserSecrets

• This isn’t totally secure, but may be an improvement over .env and .json files stored inside your project folder which can accidentally get committed to source control if your .gitignore file isn’t meticulously managed

1. Create a New .NET App

dotnet new console

2. Set the Secrets ID

• right-click the project and manage user secrets

OR

• dotnet user-secrets init

OR

• Edit the .csproj file to add a unique UserSecretsId
• Generate a unique ID with uuidtools.com

<PropertyGroup>
  <UserSecretsId>ee35bcf4-291d-11ec-9dc7-7f3593499a27</UserSecretsId>
</PropertyGroup>

3. Add Secrets Locally

dotnet user-secrets set username me@example.com
dotnet user-secrets set password mySecretPass123

4. Install the UserSecrets Package

dotnet add package Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.UserSecrets

💡 CAREFUL: If you accidentally install Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration instead of Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.UserSecrets you won’t have access to AddUserSecrets()

5. Access Secrets in Code

using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;

var config = new ConfigurationBuilder().AddUserSecrets<Program>().Build();
string username = config["username"];
string password = config["password"];

NOTE: If a key does not exist its value will be null

Environment Variables

Cloud platforms (GitHub Actions, Azure, etc.) often use environment variables to manage secrets. Using local user secrets to populate environment variables is a useful way to locally develop applications that will run in the cloud.

This example shows how to populate environment variables from user secrets:

using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        SetEnvironmentVariablesFromUserSecrets();
        string username = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("username");
        string password = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("password");
    }

    static void SetEnvironmentVariablesFromUserSecrets()
    {
        var config = new ConfigurationBuilder().AddUserSecrets<Program>().Build();
        foreach (var child in config.GetChildren())
        {
            Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable(child.Key, child.Value);
        }
    }
}

GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions makes it easy to load repository secrets into environment variables. See GitHub / Encrypted secrets for more information about how to add secrets to your repository.

This example snippet of a GitHub action loads two GitHub repository secrets (USERNAME and PASSWORD) as environment variables (username and password) that can be read by my unit tests using Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable() as shown above.

    steps:
      ...
      - name: 🧪 Run Tests
        env:
          username: ${{ secrets.USERNAME }}
          password: ${{ secrets.PASSWORD }}
        run: dotnet test ./src

Conclusions

Using these strategies I am able to write code that seamlessly accesses secrets locally on my dev machine and from environment variables when running in the cloud. Since this strategy does not store secrets inside my project folder, the chance of accidentally committing a .env or other secrets file to source control approaches zero.

Resources

• NuGet Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.UserSecrets

• Using .env in .NET by Dustin Moris Gorski

• Microsoft Documentation for Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable()

• GitHub / Encrypted secrets

Drawing with Maui.Graphics

.NET MAUI (Multi-Platform Application User Interface) is a new framework for creating cross-platform apps using C#. MAUI will be released as part of .NET 6 in November 2021 and it is expected to come with Maui.Graphics, a cross-platform drawing library superior to System.Drawing in many ways. Although System.Drawing.Common currently supports rendering in Linux and MacOS, cross-platform support for System.Drawing will sunset over the next few releases and begin throwing a PlatformNotSupportedException in .NET 6.

By creating a graphics model using only Maui.Graphics dependencies, users can share drawing code across multiple rendering technologies (GDI, Skia, SharpDX, etc.), operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS, etc.), and application frameworks (WinForms, WPF, Maui, WinUI, etc.). This page demonstrates how to create a platform-agnostic graphics model and render it using Windows Forms and WPF. Resources in the Maui.Graphics namespace can be used by any modern .NET application (not just Maui apps).

⚠️ WARNING: Maui.Graphics is still a pre-release experimental library (as noted on their GitHub page). Although the code examples on this page work presently, the API may change between now and the official release.

1. Create a new Project

For this example I will start by creating a a .NET 5.0 WinForms project from scratch. Later we will extend the solution to include a WPF project that uses the same graphics model.

2. Add References to Maui.Graphics

We need to get the windows forms MAUI control and all its dependencies. At the time of writing (September, 2021) these packages are not yet available on NuGet, but they can be downloaded from the Microsoft.Maui.Graphics GitHub page.

💡 Tip: If you’re developing a desktop application you can improve the “rebuild all” time by editing the csproj files of your dependencies so TargetFrameworks only includes .NET Standard targets.

• Add the Microsoft.Maui.Graphics project to your solution and add a reference to it from your project.

• Windows Forms: Add the Microsoft.Maui.Graphics.GDI.Winforms project to your solution and add a reference to it in your WinForms project. A GDIGraphicsView control should appear in the toolbox.

• WPF: Add the Microsoft.Maui.Graphics.Skia.WPF project to your solution and add a reference to it in your WPF project. A WDSkiaGraphicsView control should appear in the toolbox.

3. Create a Drawable Object

A drawable is a class that implements IDrawable, has a Draw() method, and can be rendered anywhere Maui.Graphics is supported. By only depending on Maui.Graphics it’s easy to create a graphics model that can be used on any operating system using any supported graphical framework.

using Microsoft.Maui.Graphics;

This drawable fills the image blue and renders 1,000 randomly-placed anti-aliased semi-transparent white lines on it. Note that the location of the lines depends on the size of the render field (passed-in as an argument).

public class RandomLines : IDrawable
{
    public void Draw(ICanvas canvas, RectangleF dirtyRect)
    {
        canvas.FillColor = Color.FromArgb("#003366");
        canvas.FillRectangle(dirtyRect);

        canvas.StrokeSize = 1;
        canvas.StrokeColor = Color.FromRgba(255, 255, 255, 100);
        Random Rand = new();
        for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++)
        {
            canvas.DrawLine(
                x1: (float)Rand.NextDouble() * dirtyRect.Width,
                y1: (float)Rand.NextDouble() * dirtyRect.Height,
                x2: (float)Rand.NextDouble() * dirtyRect.Width,
                y2: (float)Rand.NextDouble() * dirtyRect.Height);
        }
    }
}

4. Add a GraphicsView Control

Drag/drop a GraphicsView control from the Toolbox onto your application and assign your graphics model to its Drawable field.

For animations you can use a timer to invalidate the control (forcing a redraw) automatically every 20 ms.

Windows Forms (Rendering with GDI)

Windows Forms applications may also want to intercept SizeChanged events to force redraws as the window is resized.

public partial class Form1 : Form
{
    public Form1()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        gdiGraphicsView1.Drawable = new RandomLines();
    }

    private void GdiGraphicsView1_SizeChanged(object? sender, EventArgs e) =>
        gdiGraphicsView1.Invalidate();

    private void timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) =>
        gdiGraphicsView1.Invalidate();
}

I found performance to be quite adequate. On my system 1,000 lines rendered on an 800x600 window at ~60 fps. Like System.Drawing this system slows down as a function of image size, so full-screen 1920x1080 animation was much slower (~10 fps).

WPF (Rendering with SkiaSharp)

<Skia:WDSkiaGraphicsView Name="MyGraphicsView" />

public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
    public MainWindow()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        MyGraphicsView.Drawable = new RandomLines();

        DispatcherTimer timer = new();
        timer.Interval = TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(20);
        timer.Tick += Timer_Tick; ;
        timer.Start();
    }

    private void Timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e) =>
        MyGraphicsView.Invalidate();
}

Extend the Graphics Model

Since our project is configured to display the same graphics model with both WinForms and WPF, it’s easy to edit the model in one place and it’s updated everywhere. We can replace the random lines model with one that manages randomly colored and sized balls that bounce off the edges of the window as the model advances.

BallField.cs

public class BallField : IDrawable
{
    private readonly Ball[] Balls;

    public BallField(int ballCount)
    {
        Balls = new Ball[ballCount];
    }

    public void Draw(ICanvas canvas, RectangleF dirtyRect)
    {
        canvas.FillColor = Colors.Navy;
        canvas.FillRectangle(dirtyRect);

        foreach (Ball ball in Balls)
        {
            ball?.Draw(canvas);
        }
    }

    public void Randomize(double width, double height)
    {
        Random rand = new();
        for (int i = 0; i < Balls.Length; i++)
        {
            Balls[i] = new()
            {
                X = rand.NextDouble() * width,
                Y = rand.NextDouble() * height,
                Radius = rand.NextDouble() * 5 + 5,
                XVel = rand.NextDouble() - .5,
                YVel = rand.NextDouble() - .5,
                R = (byte)rand.Next(50, 255),
                G = (byte)rand.Next(50, 255),
                B = (byte)rand.Next(50, 255),
            };
        }
    }

    public void Advance(double timeDelta, double width, double height)
    {
        foreach (Ball ball in Balls)
        {
            ball?.Advance(timeDelta, width, height);
        }
    }
}

Ball.cs

public class Ball
{
    public double X;
    public double Y;
    public double Radius = 5;
    public double XVel;
    public double YVel;
    public byte R, G, B;

    public void Draw(ICanvas canvas)
    {
        canvas.FillColor = Color.FromRgb(R, G, B);
        canvas.FillCircle((float)X, (float)Y, (float)Radius);
    }

    public void Advance(double timeDelta, double width, double height)
    {
        MoveForward(timeDelta);
        Bounce(width, height);
    }

    private void MoveForward(double timeDelta)
    {
        X += XVel * timeDelta;
        Y += YVel * timeDelta;
    }

    private void Bounce(double width, double height)
    {
        double minX = Radius;
        double minY = Radius;
        double maxX = width - Radius;
        double maxY = height - Radius;

        if (X < minX)
        {
            X = minX + (minX - X);
            XVel = -XVel;
        }
        else if (X > maxX)
        {
            X = maxX - (X - maxX);
            XVel = -XVel;
        }

        if (Y < minY)
        {
            Y = minY + (minY - Y);
            YVel = -YVel;
        }
        else if (Y > maxY)
        {
            Y = maxY - (Y - maxY);
            YVel = -YVel;
        }
    }
}

Download This Project

• Source Code: Balls.zip (10 kB)

• WinForms (GDI) Demo: Balls-WinForms.exe (237 kB)

• WPF (Skia) Demo: Balls-WPF.exe (13 MB)

To build this project from source code you currently have to download Maui.Graphics source from GitHub and edit the solution file to point to the correct directory containing these projects. This will get a lot easier after Microsoft puts their WinForms and WPF controls on NuGet.

Coding Challenge

Can you recreate this classic screensaver using Maui.Graphics? Bonus points if the user can customize the number of shapes, the number of corners each shape has, and the number of lines drawn in each shape’s history. It’s a fun problem and I encourage you to give it a go! Here’s how I did it: mystify-maui.zip

Resources

• Draw with Maui.Graphics and Skia in a C# Console Application

• Microsoft.Maui.Graphics on GitHub

• Maui.Graphics on NuGet

• Maui on GitHub

• C# Data Visualization

• https://Maui.Graphics

• Maui.Graphics WPF Quickstart

• Maui.Graphics WinForms Quickstart

Draw with Maui.Graphics and Skia in a C# Console Application

Microsoft’s System.Drawing.Common package is commonly used for cross-platform graphics in .NET Framework and .NET Core applications, but according to the dotnet roadmap System.Drawing will soon only support Windows. As Microsoft sunsets cross-platform support for System.Drawing they will be simultaneously developing Microsoft.Maui.Graphics, a cross-platform graphics library for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Tizen and Linux completely in C#.

The Maui.Graphics library can be used in any .NET application (not just MAUI applications). This page documents how I used the Maui.Drawing package to render graphics in memory (using a Skia back-end) and save them as static images from a console application.

I predict Maui.Graphics will eventually evolve to overtake System.Drawing in utilization. It has many advantages for performance and memory management (discussed extensively elsewhere on the internet), but it is still early in development. As of today (July 2021) the Maui.Graphics GitHub page warns “This is an experimental library … There is no official support. Use at your own Risk.”

Maui Graphics Skia Console Quickstart

This program will create an image, fill it with blue, add 1,000 random lines, then draw some text. It is written as a .NET 5 top-level console application and requires the Microsoft.Maui.Graphics and Microsoft.Maui.Graphics.Skia NuGet packages (both are currently in preview).

We use SkiaSharp to create a canvas, but importantly that canvas implements Microsoft.Maui.Graphics.ICanvas (it’s not Skia-specific) so all the methods that draw on it can be agnostic to which rendering system was used. This makes it easy to write generic rendering methods now and have the option to switch the rendering system later.

Program.cs

using System;
using System.IO;
using Microsoft.Maui.Graphics;
using Microsoft.Maui.Graphics.Skia;

// Use Skia to create a Maui graphics context and canvas
BitmapExportContext bmpContext = SkiaGraphicsService.Instance.CreateBitmapExportContext(600, 400);
SizeF bmpSize = new(bmpContext.Width, bmpContext.Height);
ICanvas canvas = bmpContext.Canvas;

// Draw on the canvas with abstract methods that are agnostic to the renderer
ClearBackground(canvas, bmpSize, Colors.Navy);
DrawRandomLines(canvas, bmpSize, 1000);
DrawBigTextWithShadow(canvas, "This is Maui.Graphics with Skia");
SaveFig(bmpContext, Path.GetFullPath("quickstart.jpg"));

static void ClearBackground(ICanvas canvas, SizeF bmpSize, Color bgColor)
{
    canvas.FillColor = Colors.Navy;
    canvas.FillRectangle(0, 0, bmpSize.Width, bmpSize.Height);
}

static void DrawRandomLines(ICanvas canvas, SizeF bmpSize, int count = 1000)
{
    Random rand = new();
    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
    {
        canvas.StrokeSize = (float)rand.NextDouble() * 10;

        canvas.StrokeColor = new Color(
            red: (float)rand.NextDouble(),
            green: (float)rand.NextDouble(),
            blue: (float)rand.NextDouble(),
            alpha: .2f);

        canvas.DrawLine(
            x1: (float)rand.NextDouble() * bmpSize.Width,
            y1: (float)rand.NextDouble() * bmpSize.Height,
            x2: (float)rand.NextDouble() * bmpSize.Width,
            y2: (float)rand.NextDouble() * bmpSize.Height);
    }
}

static void DrawBigTextWithShadow(ICanvas canvas, string text)
{
    canvas.FontSize = 36;
    canvas.FontColor = Colors.White;
    canvas.SetShadow(offset: new SizeF(2, 2), blur: 1, color: Colors.Black);
    canvas.DrawString(text, 20, 50, HorizontalAlignment.Left);
}

static void SaveFig(BitmapExportContext bmp, string filePath)
{
    bmp.WriteToFile(filePath);
    Console.WriteLine($"WROTE: {filePath}");
}

MauiGraphicsDemo.csproj

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">

  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net5.0</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <ItemGroup>
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Maui.Graphics" Version="6.0.100-preview.6.299" />
    <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.Maui.Graphics.Skia" Version="6.0.100-preview.6.299" />
  </ItemGroup>

</Project>

Resources

• Animated Rendering with SkiaSharp and OpenGL
• Microsoft.Maui.Graphics on GitHub
• Microsoft.Maui.Graphics on NuGet
• SkiaSharp Graphics in Xamarin.Forms
• Maui.Graphics

C# Microphone Level Monitor

This page demonstrates how to continuously monitor microphone input using C#. Code here may be a helpful reference for developers interested in working with mono or stereo data captured from an audio device in real time. This project uses NAudio to provide simple access to the microphone on Windows platforms.

Mono	Stereo

Full source code is available on GitHub (Program.cs)

Configure the Audio Input Device

This program starts by creating a WaveInEvent with a WaveFormat that specifies the sample rate, bit depth, and number of channels (1 for mono, 2 for stereo).

We can create a function to handle incoming data and add it to the DataAvailable event handler:

var waveIn = new NAudio.Wave.WaveInEvent
{
    DeviceNumber = 0, // customize this to select your microphone device
    WaveFormat = new NAudio.Wave.WaveFormat(rate: 44100, bits: 16, channels: 1),
    BufferMilliseconds = 50
};
waveIn.DataAvailable += ShowPeakMono;
waveIn.StartRecording();

Analyze Mono Audio Data

This method is called when the incoming audio buffer is filled. One of the arguments gives you access to the raw bytes in the buffer, and it’s up to you to convert them to the appropriate data format.

This example is suitable for 16-bit (two bytes per sample) mono input.

private static void ShowPeakMono(object sender, NAudio.Wave.WaveInEventArgs args)
{
    float maxValue = 32767;
    int peakValue = 0;
    int bytesPerSample = 2;
    for (int index = 0; index < args.BytesRecorded; index += bytesPerSample)
    {
        int value = BitConverter.ToInt16(args.Buffer, index);
        peakValue = Math.Max(peakValue, value);
    }

    Console.WriteLine("L=" + GetBars(peakValue / maxValue));
}

This method converts a level (fraction) into bars suitable to display in the console:

private static string GetBars(double fraction, int barCount = 35)
{
    int barsOn = (int)(barCount * fraction);
    int barsOff = barCount - barsOn;
    return new string('#', barsOn) + new string('-', barsOff);
}

Analyze Stereo Audio Data

When the WaveFormat is configured for 2 channels, bytes in the incoming audio buffer will have left and right channel values interleaved (2 bytes for left, two bytes for right, then repeat). Left and right channels must be treated separately to display independent levels for stereo audio inputs.

This example is suitable for 16-bit (two bytes per sample) stereo input.

private static void ShowPeakStereo(object sender, NAudio.Wave.WaveInEventArgs args)
{
    float maxValue = 32767;
    int peakL = 0;
    int peakR = 0;
    int bytesPerSample = 4;
    for (int index = 0; index < args.BytesRecorded; index += bytesPerSample)
    {
        int valueL = BitConverter.ToInt16(args.Buffer, index);
        peakL = Math.Max(peakL, valueL);
        int valueR = BitConverter.ToInt16(args.Buffer, index + 2);
        peakR = Math.Max(peakR, valueR);
    }

    Console.Write("L=" + GetBars(peakL / maxValue));
    Console.Write(" ");
    Console.Write("R=" + GetBars(peakR / maxValue));
    Console.Write("\n");
}

Resources

• Realtime Audio Visualization in Python - a similar project using Python and the pyaudio library

• NuGet: NAudio

• GitHub: console-microphone/Program.cs

• GitHub: C# Data Visualization

Working with 16-bit Images in CSharp

Scientific image analysis frequently involves working with 12-bit and 14-bit sensor data stored in 16-bit TIF files. Images commonly encountered on the internat are 24-bit or 32-bit RGB images (where each pixel is represented by 8 bits each for red, green, blue, and possibly alpha). Typical image analysis libraries and documentation often lack information about how to work with 16-bit image data.

This page summarizes how I work with 16-bit TIF file data in C#. I prefer Magick.NET (an ImageMagick wrapper) when working with many different file formats, and LibTiff.Net whenever I know my source files will all be identically-formatted TIFs or multidimensional TIFs (stacks).

ImageMagick

ImageMagick is a free and open-source cross-platform software suite for displaying, creating, converting, modifying, and editing raster images. Although ImageMagick is commonly used at the command line, .NET wrappers exist to make it easy to use ImageMagick from within C# applications.

ImageMagick has many packages on NuGet and they are described on ImageMagick’s documentation GitHub page. TLDR: Install the Q16 package (not HDRI) to allow you to work with 16-bit data without losing precision.

ImageMagick is free and distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, so it can easily be used in commercial projects.

An advantage of loading images with ImageMagick is that it will work easily whether the source file is a JPG, PNG, GIF, TIF, or something different. ImageMagick supports over 100 file formats!

Load a 16-bit TIF File as a Pixel Value Array

// Load pixel values from a 16-bit TIF using ImageMagick (Q16)
MagickImage image = new MagickImage("16bit.tif");
ushort[] pixelValues = image.GetPixels().GetValues();

That’s it! The pixelValues array will contain one value per pixel from the original image. The length of this array will equal the image’s height times its width.

Load an 8-bit TIF File as a Pixel Value Array

Since the Q16 package was installed, 2 bytes will be allocated for each pixel (16-bit) even if it only requires one byte (8-bit). In this case you must collect just the bytes you are interested in:

MagickImage image = new MagickImage("8bit.tif");
ushort[] pixelValues = image.GetPixels().GetValues();
int[] values8 = Enumerable.Range(0, pixelValues.Length / 2).Select(x => (int)pixelValues[x * 2 + 1]).ToArray();

Load a 32-bit TIF File as a Pixel Value Array

For this you’ll have to install the high dynamic range (HDRI) Q16 package, then your GetValues() method will return a float[] instead of a ushort[]. Convert these values to proper pixel intensity values by dividing by 2^16.

MagickImage image = new MagickImage("32bit.tif");
float[] pixels = image.GetPixels().GetValues();
for (int i = 0; i < pixels.Length; i++)
    pixels[i] = (long)pixels[i] / 65535;

LibTiff

LibTiff is a pure C# (.NET Standard) TIF file reader. Although it doesn’t support all the image formats that ImageMagick does, it’s really good at working with TIFs. It has a more intuitive interface for working with TIF-specific features such as multi-dimensional images (color, Z position, time, etc.).

LibTiff gives you a lower-level access to the bytes that underlie image data, so it’s on you to perform the conversion from a byte array to the intended data type. Note that some TIFs are little-endian encoded and others are big-endian encoded, and endianness can be read from the header.

LibTiff is distributed under a BSD 3-clause license, so it too can be easily used in commercial projects.

Load a 16-bit TIF as a Pixel Value Array

// Load pixel values from a 16-bit TIF using LibTiff
using Tiff image = Tiff.Open("16bit.tif", "r");

// get information from the header
int width = image.GetField(TiffTag.IMAGEWIDTH)[0].ToInt();
int height = image.GetField(TiffTag.IMAGELENGTH)[0].ToInt();
int bytesPerPixel = image.GetField(TiffTag.BITSPERSAMPLE)[0].ToInt() / 8;

// read the image data bytes
int numberOfStrips = image.NumberOfStrips();
byte[] bytes = new byte[numberOfStrips * image.StripSize()];
for (int i = 0; i < numberOfStrips; ++i)
    image.ReadRawStrip(i, bytes, i * image.StripSize(), image.StripSize());

// convert the data bytes to a double array
if (bytesPerPixel != 2)
    throw new NotImplementedException("this is only for 16-bit TIFs");
double[] data = new double[bytes.Length / bytesPerPixel];
for (int i = 0; i < data.Length; i++)
{
    if (image.IsBigEndian())
        data[i] = bytes[i * 2 + 1] + (bytes[i * 2] << 8);
    else
        data[i] = bytes[i * 2] + (bytes[i * 2 + 1] << 8);
}

Routines for detecting and converting data from 8-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit TIF files can be created by inspecting bytesPerPixel. LibTiff has documentation describing how to work with RGB TIF files and multi-frame TIFs.

Convert a Pixel Array to a 2D Array

I often prefer to work with scientific image data as a 2D arrays of double values. I write my analysis routines to pass double[,] between methods so the file I/O can be encapsulated in a static class.

// Load pixel values from a 16-bit TIF using ImageMagick (Q16)
MagickImage image = new MagickImage("16bit.tif");
ushort[] pixelValues = image.GetPixels().GetValues();

// create a 2D array of pixel values
double[,] imageData = new double[image.Height, image.Width];
for (int i = 0; i < image.Height; i++)
    for (int j = 0; j < image.Width; j++)
        imageData[i, j] = pixelValues[i * image.Width + j];

Other Libraries

ImageProcessor

According to ImageProcessor’s GitHub page, “ImageProcessor is, and will only ever be supported on the .NET Framework running on a Windows OS” … it doesn’t appear to be actively maintained and is effectively labeled as deprecated, so I won’t spend much time looking further into it.

ImageSharp

As of the time of writing, ImageSharp does not support TIF format, but it appears likely to be supported in a future release.

System.Drawing

Although this library can save images at different depths, it can only load image files with 8-bit depths. System.Drawing does not support loading 16-bit TIFs, so another library must be used to work with these file types.

Resources

• C# Image Analysis (GitHub) - a collection of code examples for working with image data as 2D arrays
• LibTiff.Net - The .NET version of original libtiff library
• dlemstra/Magick.NET - The .NET library for ImageMagick
• ImageSharp - Supported image formats