How to convert a byte[] to a BufferedImage in Java?

Question

I'm posting this thread because I have some difficulties to deal with pictures in Java. I would like to be able to convert a picture into a byte[] array, and then to be able to do the reverse operation, so I can change the RGB of each pixel, then make a new picture. I want to use this solution because setRGB() and getRGB() of BufferedImage may be too slow for huge pictures (correct me if I'm wrong).

I read some posts here to obtain a byte[] array (such as here) so that each pixel is represented by 3 or 4 cells of the array containing the red, the green and the blue values (with the additional alpha value, when there are 4 cells), which is quite useful and easy to use for me. Here's the code I use to obtain this array (stored in a PixelArray class I've created) :

public PixelArray(BufferedImage image)
{
    width = image.getWidth();
    height = image.getHeight();
    DataBuffer toArray = image.getRaster().getDataBuffer();
    array = ((DataBufferByte) toArray).getData();
    hasAlphaChannel = image.getAlphaRaster() != null;
}

My big trouble is that I haven't found any efficient method to convert this byte[] array to a new image, if I wanted to transform the picture (for example, remove the blue/green values and only keeping the red one). I tried those solutions :

1) Making a DataBuffer object, then make a SampleModel, to finally create a WritableRaster and then BufferedImage (with additional ColorModel and Hashtable objects). It didn't work because I apparently don't have all the information I need (I have no idea what's the Hashtable for BufferedImage() constructor).

2) Using a ByteArrayInputStream. This didn't work because the byte[] array expected with ByteArrayInputStream has nothing to do with mine : it represents each byte of the file, and not each component of each pixel (with 3-4 bytes for each pixel)...

Could someone help me?

Answer 1

Try this:

private BufferedImage createImageFromBytes(byte[] imageData) {
    ByteArrayInputStream bais = new ByteArrayInputStream(imageData);
    try {
        return ImageIO.read(bais);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }
}