Turn an array of pixels into an Image object with Java's ImageIO?

Question

I'm currently turning an array of pixel values (originally created with a java.awt.image.PixelGrabber object) into an Image object using the following code:

public Image getImageFromArray(int[] pixels, int width, int height) {
    MemoryImageSource mis = new MemoryImageSource(width, height, pixels, 0, width);
    Toolkit tk = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
    return tk.createImage(mis);
}

Is it possible to achieve the same result using classes from the ImageIO package(s) so I don't have to use the AWT Toolkit?

Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit() does not seem to be 100% reliable and will sometimes throw an AWTError, whereas the ImageIO classes should always be available, which is why I'm interested in changing my method.

Answer 1

You can create the image without using ImageIO. Just create a BufferedImage using an image type matching the contents of the pixel array.

public static Image getImageFromArray(int[] pixels, int width, int height) {
            BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
            WritableRaster raster = (WritableRaster) image.getData();
            raster.setPixels(0,0,width,height,pixels);
            return image;
        }

When working with the PixelGrabber, don't forget to extract the RGBA info from the pixel array before calling getImageFromArray. There's an example of this in the handlepixelmethod in the PixelGrabber javadoc. Once you do that, make sure the image type in the BufferedImage constructor to BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB.