Resizing an indexed image in Java without losing transparency

Question

This is my function to resize images. The quality is not photoshop but it's acceptable.

What's not acceptable is the behaviour on indexed png.
We expect that if we scale down an image with a 256 colors palette with a transparent index we would get a resized image with same transparency, but this it not the case.

So we did the resize on a new ARGB image and then we reduce it to 256 colors. The problem is how to "reintroduce" the transparent pixel index.

private static BufferedImage internalResize(BufferedImage source, int destWidth, int destHeight) {
    int sourceWidth = source.getWidth();
    int sourceHeight = source.getHeight();
    double xScale = ((double) destWidth) / (double) sourceWidth;
    double yScale = ((double) destHeight) / (double) sourceHeight;
    Graphics2D g2d = null;

    BufferedImage resizedImage = new BufferedImage(destWidth, destHeight, BufferedImage.TRANSLUCENT);

    log.debug("resizing image to  w:" + destWidth + " h:" + destHeight);
    try {

        g2d = resizedImage.createGraphics();

        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ALPHA_INTERPOLATION, RenderingHints.VALUE_ALPHA_INTERPOLATION_QUALITY);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_COLOR_RENDERING, RenderingHints.VALUE_COLOR_RENDER_QUALITY);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_DITHERING, RenderingHints.VALUE_DITHER_ENABLE);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_INTERPOLATION, RenderingHints.VALUE_INTERPOLATION_BICUBIC);
        g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_RENDERING, RenderingHints.VALUE_RENDER_QUALITY);

        AffineTransform at = AffineTransform.getScaleInstance(xScale, yScale);

        g2d.drawRenderedImage(source, at);

    } finally {
        if (g2d != null)
            g2d.dispose();
    }

//doesn't keep the transparency
    if (source.getType() == BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED) {
        log.debug("reducing to color-indexed image");

        BufferedImage indexedImage = new BufferedImage(destWidth, destHeight, BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED);

        try {
            Graphics g = indexedImage.createGraphics();
            g.drawImage(resizedImage, 0, 0, null);
        } finally {
            if (g != null)
                g.dispose();
        }
        System.err.println("source" + ((IndexColorModel) source.getColorModel()).getTransparentPixel()
                         + "   " + ((IndexColorModel) indexedImage.getColorModel()).getTransparentPixel());

        return indexedImage;
    }

    return resizedImage;

}

Answer 1

Try changing

BufferedImage indexedImage = new BufferedImage(destWidth, destHeight, BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED);

to

    BufferedImage indexedImage = new BufferedImage(destWidth, destHeight, BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED, (IndexColorModel) source.getColorModel());

Even if that specifically doesn't help you (which it might not if the resizing, for whatever reason, changes what specific color values are indexed), the fact that you can create a new BufferedImage with a given IndexColorModel will probably be quite useful for you.

http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/awt/image/BufferedImage.html#BufferedImage%28int,%20int,%20int,%20java.awt.image.IndexColorModel%29

EDIT: Just noticed that your resizedImage constructor should probably use BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB rather than BufferedImage.TRANSLUCENT . Not sure if that will change how it works, but BufferedImage.TRANSLUCENT isn't supposed to be passed to that form of the constructor. http://download.oracle.com/javase/1,5.0/docs/api/java/awt/image/BufferedImage.html#BufferedImage%28int,%20int,%20int%29

Anyway, maybe try something like this:

DirectColorModel resizedModel = (DirectColorModel) resizedImage.getColorModel();
int numPixels = resizedImage.getWidth() * resizedImage.getHeight();

byte[numPixels] reds;
byte[numPixels] blues;
byte[numPixels] greens;
byte[numPixels] alphas;
int curIndex = 0;
int curPixel;

for (int i = 0; i < resizedImage.getWidth(); i++)
{
    for (int j = 0; j < resizedImage.getHeight(); j++)
    {
        curPixel = resizedImage.getRGB(i, j);
        reds[curIndex] = resizedModel.getRed(curPixel);
        blues[curIndex]= resizedModel.getBlue(curPixel);
        greens[curIndex] = resizedModel.getGreen(curPixel);
        alphas[curIndex] = resizedModel.getAlpha(curPixel);
        curIndex++;
    }
}

BufferedImage indexedImage = new BufferedImage(destWidth, destHeight, BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED, new IndexColorModel(resizedModel.pixel_bits, numPixels, reds, blues, greens, alphas));

Don't know if this will actually work, though.

Answer 2

Indexed images with transparency are a hack. They only work under certain conditions and resizing isn't one of them.

An image with transparency doesn't just have fully opaque and fully transparent pixels. In particular at a irregularly shaped borders, there are many pixels with partial transparency. If you save it in a format with indexed colors where a single color is used for transparent pixels, you have to decide what color the background will have. All pixels with partial transparency are then blended between their color and the background color (according to their transparency) and become fully opaque. Only the fully transparent pixel are assigned the transparent pseudo color.

If such an image is displayed against a background with differnt color, an ugly border will become apparent. It's an artifact of the inadequate transparency handling.

When you resize the image, you introduce more artifacts. The color of a new pixels is usually blended from several neighboring pixels. If some are transparent and some are opaque, the result is a partially transparent pixel. When you save it, the partially transparent pixel is blended against the background color and becomes opaque. As a result, the opaque area (and the associated artifacts) grow with each resize (or most other image manipulations).

Whatever programming language or graphics library you use, the artifacts will grow and the result will become worse. I recommend you use a ARGB buffer and save the image as a non-indexed PNG file.