Why should I use JLabel instead of Image?

Question

I always see people loading an image into a JLabel . Are there any advantages of using JLabel over Image ?

And when I should use Image?

Answer 1

Are there any advantages of using JLabel over Image?

If all you want to do is display an image at its actual size then use a JLabel so you don't reinvent the wheel.

And when I should use Image?

If you want to customize the painting of the image. Maybe to do dynamic scaling, tiling, rotations etc.

Answer 2

An Image is not a Swing component but a JLabel with an ImageIcon is. So when you want to place your Image to a regular Swing container you have to use a JLabel . But there are other ways to decorate an Image to become a Component , JXImagePanel from the SwingX project is an example.