How can I resize an image using Java?
I need to resize PNG, JPEG and GIF files. How can I do this using Java?
Answer
FWIW I just released (Apache 2, hosted on GitHub) a simple image-scaling library for Java called imgscalr (available on Maven central).
The library implements a few different approaches to image-scaling (including Chris Campbell's incremental approach with a few minor enhancements) and will either pick the most optimal approach for you if you ask it to, or give you the fastest or best looking (if you ask for that).
Usage is dead-simple, just a bunch of static methods. The simplest use-case is:
BufferedImage scaledImage = Scalr.resize(myImage, 200);
All operations maintain the image's original proportions, so in this case you are asking imgscalr to resize your image within a bounds of 200 pixels wide and 200 pixels tall and by default it will automatically select the best-looking and fastest approach for that since it wasn't specified.
I realize on the outset this looks like self-promotion (it is), but I spent my fair share of time googling this exact same subject and kept coming up with different results/approaches/thoughts/suggestions and decided to sit down and write a simple implementation that would address that 80-85% use-cases where you have an image and probably want a thumbnail for it -- either as fast as possible or as good-looking as possible (for those that have tried, you'll notice doing a Graphics.drawImage even with BICUBIC interpolation to a small enough image, it still looks like garbage).