It is an interesting question... It is late, I will experiment tomorrow. I will first try and use a BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED (perhaps after drawing) to see if Java is smart enough to generate an 8bit PNG.
Or perhaps some image library can allow that.
[EDIT] Some years later... Actually, I made the code at the time, but forgot to update this thread... I used the code pointed at by Kat, with a little refinement on the handling of transparency, and saving in PNG format instead of Gif format. It works in making a 8-bit PNG file with all-or-nothing transparency.
You can find a working test file at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~philho/+junk/Java/view/head:/Tests/src/org/philhosoft/tests/image/AddTransparency.java
using my ImageUtil class.
Since the code isn't that big, for posterity sake, I post it here, without the JavaDoc to save some lines.
public class ImageUtil
{
public static int ALPHA_BIT_MASK = 0xFF000000;
public static BufferedImage imageToBufferedImage(Image image, int width, int height)
{
return imageToBufferedImage(image, width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
}
public static BufferedImage imageToBufferedImage(Image image, int width, int height, int type)
{
BufferedImage dest = new BufferedImage(width, height, type);
Graphics2D g2 = dest.createGraphics();
g2.drawImage(image, 0, 0, null);
g2.dispose();
return dest;
}
public static BufferedImage convertRGBAToIndexed(BufferedImage srcImage)
{
// Create a non-transparent palletized image
Image flattenedImage = transformTransparencyToMagenta(srcImage);
BufferedImage flatImage = imageToBufferedImage(flattenedImage,
srcImage.getWidth(), srcImage.getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_BYTE_INDEXED);
BufferedImage destImage = makeColorTransparent(flatImage, 0, 0);
return destImage;
}
private static Image transformTransparencyToMagenta(BufferedImage image)
{
ImageFilter filter = new RGBImageFilter()
{
@Override
public final int filterRGB(int x, int y, int rgb)
{
int pixelValue = 0;
int opacity = (rgb & ALPHA_BIT_MASK) >>> 24;
if (opacity < 128)
{
// Quite transparent: replace color with transparent magenta
// (traditional color for binary transparency)
pixelValue = 0x00FF00FF;
}
else
{
// Quite opaque: get pure color
pixelValue = (rgb & 0xFFFFFF) | ALPHA_BIT_MASK;
}
return pixelValue;
}
};
ImageProducer ip = new FilteredImageSource(image.getSource(), filter);
return Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().createImage(ip);
}
public static BufferedImage makeColorTransparent(BufferedImage image, int x, int y)
{
ColorModel cm = image.getColorModel();
if (!(cm instanceof IndexColorModel))
return image; // No transparency added as we don't have an indexed image
IndexColorModel originalICM = (IndexColorModel) cm;
WritableRaster raster = image.getRaster();
int colorIndex = raster.getSample(x, y, 0); // colorIndex is an offset in the palette of the ICM'
// Number of indexed colors
int size = originalICM.getMapSize();
byte[] reds = new byte[size];
byte[] greens = new byte[size];
byte[] blues = new byte[size];
originalICM.getReds(reds);
originalICM.getGreens(greens);
originalICM.getBlues(blues);
IndexColorModel newICM = new IndexColorModel(8, size, reds, greens, blues, colorIndex);
return new BufferedImage(newICM, raster, image.isAlphaPremultiplied(), null);
}
}
