Java – Cloning a BufferedImage object

This post shows you how to clone or copy a BufferedImage object in Java. Let’s take a look into the below implementation and example to see how it works.
 

1. Implementation

Here is the method cloning a BufferedImage object.

package com.bytenota;

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.awt.image.ColorModel;
import java.awt.image.WritableRaster;

public class ImageUtils {
    
    public static BufferedImage clone(BufferedImage bufferImage) {
        ColorModel colorModel = bufferImage.getColorModel();
        WritableRaster raster = bufferImage.copyData(null);
        boolean isAlphaPremultiplied = colorModel.isAlphaPremultiplied();
        return new BufferedImage(colorModel, raster, isAlphaPremultiplied, null);
    }
    
}

2. Example

In this code example, we test the implemented method above. We simply create a new BufferedImage object from an image file, clone this object to another by using ImageUtils.clone method, and finally compare these two objects.

package com.bytenota;

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class Example {
    
    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        
        // create BufferedImage object from a image file
        File imageFile = new File("D:/myfile.jpg");
        BufferedImage bufferedImage1 = ImageIO.read(imageFile);

        // clone the above BufferedImage object
        BufferedImage bufferedImage2 = ImageUtils.clone(bufferedImage1);
      
        // compare the above two objects
        if (bufferedImage1 == bufferedImage2) {
            System.out.println("The above two objects are the same.");
        } else {
            System.out.println("The above two objects are the different.");
        }
    }
}

The output result we should get is:

The above two objects are the different.