How to convert image to black and white using Java

Question

I convert an image to black&white in imagemagick with a command like this:

convert myimg.png -monochrome  out3.png

I'm wondering whether its possible to achieve the same result in Java? Without using Im4Java or JMagick?

@AndrewThompson that answer is dealing with conversion to grayscale. — mmgp, Jan 25 '13 at 00:54
since you never mentioned anything, I guess I should try to clarify what is needed here. You are after a dithering algorithm, I don't know which specific implementation ImageMagick uses, but the classical Floyd-Steinberg is a good first guess. — mmgp, Jan 25 '13 at 00:57
maybe because you have showed no effort in trying to understand what `convert -monochrome` produces and went with a completely different answer than the one you asked. You might as well have asked: "how do I convert a value to 0 if it is below 127 and how do I convert a value to 255 if it is above or equal 127 ?", that is what you are using right now and is a pretty dummy question. — mmgp, Jan 25 '13 at 16:22

score 25 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 25 '13 at 01:04

I guess it depends on what you mean by "mono-chrome"/"black & white"...

enter image description here

public class TestBlackAndWhite {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        new TestBlackAndWhite();
    }

    public TestBlackAndWhite() {
        EventQueue.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                try {
                    UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName());
                } catch (Exception ex) {
                }

                JFrame frame = new JFrame("Test");
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                frame.add(new TestPane());
                frame.pack();
                frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
                frame.setVisible(true);

            }
        });
    }

    public class TestPane extends JPanel {

        private BufferedImage master;
        private BufferedImage grayScale;
        private BufferedImage blackWhite;

        public TestPane() {
            try {
                master = ImageIO.read(new File("C:/Users/shane/Dropbox/pictures/439px-Join!_It's_your_duty!.jpg"));
                grayScale = ImageIO.read(new File("C:/Users/shane/Dropbox/pictures/439px-Join!_It's_your_duty!.jpg"));
                ColorConvertOp op = new ColorConvertOp(ColorSpace.getInstance(ColorSpace.CS_GRAY), null);
                op.filter(grayScale, grayScale);

                blackWhite = new BufferedImage(master.getWidth(), master.getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_BINARY);
                Graphics2D g2d = blackWhite.createGraphics();
                g2d.drawImage(master, 0, 0, this);
                g2d.dispose();

            } catch (IOException ex) {
                ex.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        @Override
        public Dimension getPreferredSize() {
            Dimension size = super.getPreferredSize();
            if (master != null) {
                size = new Dimension(master.getWidth() * 3, master.getHeight());
            }
            return size;
        }

        @Override
        protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
            super.paintComponent(g);
            if (master != null) {

                int x = (getWidth() - (master.getWidth() * 3)) / 2;
                int y = (getHeight() - master.getHeight()) / 2;

                g.drawImage(master, x, y, this);
                x += master.getWidth();
                g.drawImage(grayScale, x, y, this);
                x += master.getWidth();
                g.drawImage(blackWhite, x, y, this);

            }
        }


    }
}

Out of the three images in your answer, I'm after the one on the far right — birdy, Jan 25 '13 at 01:07
Just curious, can you set a threshold (luminance) level for conversion to 1-bit monochrome? — David R Tribble, Jan 25 '13 at 01:16
@Loadmaster To my knowledge, not using the methods described above. You could write a `BufferedImageOP` that did it though — MadProgrammer, Jan 25 '13 at 01:20
A `RescaleOp` prior to converting will do the trick. See my answer. — Andrew Thompson, Jan 25 '13 at 02:26
Interesting: calling ColorConvertOp with the CS_Gray colorspace produces a better result than calling it with the colorspace of the destination image. — Tilman Hausherr, Jan 27 '21 at 15:17

Andrew Thompson · Answer 2 · 2013-01-25T02:35:40.973

Try this crude example. We brighten or darken the image first using RescaleOp.

Image turned to B&W after scaling

import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.awt.image.RescaleOp;
import java.net.URL;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import javax.swing.*;
import javax.swing.event.ChangeEvent;
import javax.swing.event.ChangeListener;

class ColorToBlackAndWhite {

    /**
     * Returns the supplied src image brightened by a float value from 0 to 10.
     * Float values below 1.0f actually darken the source image.
     */
    public static BufferedImage brighten(BufferedImage src, float level) {
        BufferedImage dst = new BufferedImage(
                src.getWidth(), src.getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
        float[] scales = {level, level, level};
        float[] offsets = new float[4];
        RescaleOp rop = new RescaleOp(scales, offsets, null);

        Graphics2D g = dst.createGraphics();
        g.drawImage(src, rop, 0, 0);
        g.dispose();

        return dst;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        URL colorURL = new URL("https://i.stack.imgur.com/AuY9o.png");
        final BufferedImage colorImage = ImageIO.read(colorURL);

        float[] scales = {2f, 2f, 2f};
        float[] offsets = new float[4];
        RescaleOp rop = new RescaleOp(scales, offsets, null);

        final BufferedImage scaledImage = new BufferedImage(
                colorImage.getWidth(),
                colorImage.getHeight(),
                BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
        Graphics2D g = scaledImage.createGraphics();
        g.drawImage(colorImage, rop, 0, 0);

        final BufferedImage grayImage = new BufferedImage(
                colorImage.getWidth(),
                colorImage.getHeight(),
                BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_GRAY);
        g = grayImage.createGraphics();
        g.drawImage(colorImage, 0, 0, null);

        final BufferedImage blackAndWhiteImage = new BufferedImage(
                colorImage.getWidth(),
                colorImage.getHeight(),
                BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_BINARY);
        g = blackAndWhiteImage.createGraphics();
        g.drawImage(colorImage, 0, 0, null);

        g.dispose();

        Runnable r = new Runnable() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                JPanel gui = new JPanel(new BorderLayout(2, 2));
                JPanel images = new JPanel(new GridLayout(0, 2, 2, 2));
                gui.add(images, BorderLayout.CENTER);

                final JLabel scaled = new JLabel(new ImageIcon(scaledImage));
                final JSlider brighten = new JSlider(0, 1000, 100);
                gui.add(brighten, BorderLayout.PAGE_START);
                ChangeListener cl = new ChangeListener() {

                    @Override
                    public void stateChanged(ChangeEvent e) {
                        int val = brighten.getValue();
                        float valFloat = val / 1000f;
                        BufferedImage bi = brighten(colorImage, valFloat);
                        BufferedImage bw = new BufferedImage(
                                colorImage.getWidth(),
                                colorImage.getHeight(),
                                BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_BINARY);
                        Graphics g = bw.createGraphics();
                        g.drawImage(bi, 0, 0, null);
                        g.dispose();

                        scaled.setIcon(new ImageIcon(bw));
                    }
                };
                brighten.addChangeListener(cl);

                images.add(new JLabel(new ImageIcon(colorImage)));
                images.add(scaled);
                images.add(new JLabel(new ImageIcon(grayImage)));
                images.add(new JLabel(new ImageIcon(blackAndWhiteImage)));

                JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, gui);
            }
        };
        // Swing GUIs should be created and updated on the EDT
        // http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/concurrency/initial.html
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(r);
    }
}

Great, thanks. With scanned black and white text pages I found that a level of 0.55f worked well to keep a lot of detail in a thumbnail of the original image. — Sarel Botha, Apr 04 '17 at 13:46

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 25 '13 at 02:42

The effect you are achieving is not through a binarization by a pre-defined threshold, instead it is done by a technique called dithering. Many dithering methods works by propagation the error (the intensity in the present image - the binary output at a given point) and thus adjusting the next outputs. This is done to create a visual effect such that it might seem like the resulting image is not black & white -- if you don't look too closely at it.

One such simple and well-known method goes by Floyd-Steinberg, a pseudo-code for it is:

for y := 1 to image height
    for x := 1 to image width
        v := im(y, x)
        if v < 128 then
            result(y, x) := 0
        else
            result(y, x) := 255
        error := v - result(y, x)
        propagate_error(im, y, x, error)

Where propagate_error for this method can be given as (without taking care of border cases):

    im(y,   x+1) := im(y,   x+1) + (7/16) * error
    im(y+1, x+1) := im(y+1, x+1) + (1/16) * error
    im(y+1, x  ) := im(y+1, x  ) + (5/16) * error
    im(y+1, x-1) := im(y+1, x-1) + (3/16) * error

Considering the direct implementation of the pseudocode given, the following image at right is the binary version of the one at its left. There is in fact only black and white colors at the image at right, this is a trivial matter for those that know about this method but for those unaware this might seem like impossible. The patterns created give the impression that there are several gray tones, depending from far you look at the image.

enter image description here

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 07 '15 at 10:25

-Try below simple code,

 package com.bethecoder.tutorials.imageio;

import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class BlackAndWhiteTest {

  /**
   * @param args
   * @throws IOException 
   */
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {

    File file = new File("C:/Temp/stpatricks_08.gif");
    BufferedImage orginalImage = ImageIO.read(file);

    BufferedImage blackAndWhiteImg = new BufferedImage(
        orginalImage.getWidth(), orginalImage.getHeight(),
        BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_BINARY);

    Graphics2D graphics = blackAndWhiteImg.createGraphics();
    graphics.drawImage(orginalImage, 0, 0, null);

    ImageIO.write(blackAndWhiteImg, "png", new File("c:/Temp/stpatricks_08_bw.png")); 
  }

}

How to convert image to black and white using Java

4 Answers4

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