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

I've had good success using java.awt.Robot to grab a screen shot (or a segment of the screen), but to work with ImageIO, you'll need to store it in a BufferedImage instead of the memory image source. Then you can call one static method of ImageIO and save the file. Try something like:

// Capture whole screen
Rectangle region = new Rectangle(Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize());
BufferedImage capturedImage = new Robot().createScreenCapture(region);

// Save as PNG
File imageFile = new File("capturedImage.png");
ImageIO.write(capturedImage, "png", imageFile);

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

Using the raster I got an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException even when I created the BufferedImage with TYPE_INT_ARGB. However, using the setRGB(...) method of BufferedImage worked for me.