How to change colors of a Drawable in Android?

Question

I'm working on an android application, and I have a drawable that I'm loading up from a source image. On this image, I'd like to convert all of the white pixels to a different color, say blue, and then cache the resultant Drawable object so I can use it later.

So for example say I have a 20x20 PNG file that has a white circle in the middle, and that everything outside the circle is transparent. What's the best way to turn that white circle blue and cache the results? Does the answer change if I want to use that source image to create several new Drawables (say blue, red, green, orange, etc)?

I'm guessing that I'll want to use a ColorMatrix in some way, but I'm not sure how.

Answer 1

Check out this sample code "ColorMatrixSample.java"

/*
 * Copyright (C) 2007 The Android Open Source Project
 *
 * Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
 * you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package com.example.android.apis.graphics;

import com.example.android.apis.R;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Context;
import android.graphics.*;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.KeyEvent;
import android.view.View;

public class ColorMatrixSample extends GraphicsActivity {

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(new SampleView(this));
    }

    private static class SampleView extends View {
        private Paint mPaint = new Paint(Paint.ANTI_ALIAS_FLAG);
        private ColorMatrix mCM = new ColorMatrix();
        private Bitmap mBitmap;
        private float mSaturation;
        private float mAngle;

        public SampleView(Context context) {
            super(context);

            mBitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(),
                                                   R.drawable.balloons);
        }

        private static void setTranslate(ColorMatrix cm, float dr, float dg,
                                         float db, float da) {
            cm.set(new float[] {
                   2, 0, 0, 0, dr,
                   0, 2, 0, 0, dg,
                   0, 0, 2, 0, db,
                   0, 0, 0, 1, da });
        }

        private static void setContrast(ColorMatrix cm, float contrast) {
            float scale = contrast + 1.f;
               float translate = (-.5f * scale + .5f) * 255.f;
            cm.set(new float[] {
                   scale, 0, 0, 0, translate,
                   0, scale, 0, 0, translate,
                   0, 0, scale, 0, translate,
                   0, 0, 0, 1, 0 });
        }

        private static void setContrastTranslateOnly(ColorMatrix cm, float contrast) {
            float scale = contrast + 1.f;
               float translate = (-.5f * scale + .5f) * 255.f;
            cm.set(new float[] {
                   1, 0, 0, 0, translate,
                   0, 1, 0, 0, translate,
                   0, 0, 1, 0, translate,
                   0, 0, 0, 1, 0 });
        }

        private static void setContrastScaleOnly(ColorMatrix cm, float contrast) {
            float scale = contrast + 1.f;
               float translate = (-.5f * scale + .5f) * 255.f;
            cm.set(new float[] {
                   scale, 0, 0, 0, 0,
                   0, scale, 0, 0, 0,
                   0, 0, scale, 0, 0,
                   0, 0, 0, 1, 0 });
        }

        @Override protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
            Paint paint = mPaint;
            float x = 20;
            float y = 20;

            canvas.drawColor(Color.WHITE);

            paint.setColorFilter(null);
            canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, x, y, paint);

            ColorMatrix cm = new ColorMatrix();

            mAngle += 2;
            if (mAngle > 180) {
                mAngle = 0;
            }

            //convert our animated angle [-180...180] to a contrast value of [-1..1]
            float contrast = mAngle / 180.f;

            setContrast(cm, contrast);
            paint.setColorFilter(new ColorMatrixColorFilter(cm));
            canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, x + mBitmap.getWidth() + 10, y, paint);

            setContrastScaleOnly(cm, contrast);
            paint.setColorFilter(new ColorMatrixColorFilter(cm));
            canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, x, y + mBitmap.getHeight() + 10, paint);

            setContrastTranslateOnly(cm, contrast);
            paint.setColorFilter(new ColorMatrixColorFilter(cm));
            canvas.drawBitmap(mBitmap, x, y + 2*(mBitmap.getHeight() + 10),
                              paint);

            invalidate();
        }
    }
}

The relevant API is available here:

Answer 2

I was able to do this with the following code, which is taken from an activity (the layout is a very simple one, just containing an ImageView, and is not posted here).

public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.test_colors);

    ImageView iv = (ImageView) findViewById(R.id.img);
    Drawable d = getResources().getDrawable(RES);
    iv.setImageDrawable(adjust(d));
}

private Drawable adjust(Drawable d)
{
    int to = Color.RED;

    //Need to copy to ensure that the bitmap is mutable.
    Bitmap src = ((BitmapDrawable) d).getBitmap();
    Bitmap bitmap = src.copy(Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888, true);
    for(int x = 0;x < bitmap.getWidth();x++)
        for(int y = 0;y < bitmap.getHeight();y++)
            if(match(bitmap.getPixel(x, y))) 
                bitmap.setPixel(x, y, to);

    return new BitmapDrawable(bitmap);
}

private boolean match(int pixel)
{
    //There may be a better way to match, but I wanted to do a comparison ignoring
    //transparency, so I couldn't just do a direct integer compare.
    return Math.abs(Color.red(pixel) - FROM_COLOR[0]) < THRESHOLD &&
        Math.abs(Color.green(pixel) - FROM_COLOR[1]) < THRESHOLD &&
        Math.abs(Color.blue(pixel) - FROM_COLOR[2]) < THRESHOLD;
}

Answer 3

Hi Matt,

can you please post the whole code listing. I need to know how to define the FROM_COLOR and THRESHOLD variables (what their types and values should be), because I keep getting images that are screwed up.

Thanks Carl