[java] Java - get pixel array from image

I'm looking for the fastest way to get pixel data (int the form int[][]) from a BufferedImage. My goal is to be able to address pixel (x, y) from the image using int[x][y]. All the methods I have found do not do this (most of them return int[]s).

Something like this?

int[][] pixels = new int[w][h];

for( int i = 0; i < w; i++ )
    for( int j = 0; j < h; j++ )
        pixels[i][j] = img.getRGB( i, j );

Here is another FastRGB implementation found here:

public class FastRGB {
    public int width;
    public int height;
    private boolean hasAlphaChannel;
    private int pixelLength;
    private byte[] pixels;

    FastRGB(BufferedImage image) {
        pixels = ((DataBufferByte) image.getRaster().getDataBuffer()).getData();
        width = image.getWidth();
        height = image.getHeight();
        hasAlphaChannel = image.getAlphaRaster() != null;
        pixelLength = 3;
        if (hasAlphaChannel)
            pixelLength = 4;
    }

    short[] getRGB(int x, int y) {
        int pos = (y * pixelLength * width) + (x * pixelLength);
        short rgb[] = new short[4];
        if (hasAlphaChannel)
            rgb[3] = (short) (pixels[pos++] & 0xFF); // Alpha
        rgb[2] = (short) (pixels[pos++] & 0xFF); // Blue
        rgb[1] = (short) (pixels[pos++] & 0xFF); // Green
        rgb[0] = (short) (pixels[pos++] & 0xFF); // Red
        return rgb;
    }
}

What is this?

Reading an image pixel by pixel through BufferedImage's getRGB method is quite slow, this class is the solution for this.

The idea is that you construct the object by feeding it a BufferedImage instance, and it reads all the data at once and stores them in an array. Once you want to get pixels, you call getRGB

Dependencies

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.awt.image.DataBufferByte;

Considerations

Although FastRGB makes reading pixels much faster, it could lead to high memory usage, as it simply stores a copy of the image. So if you have a 4MB BufferedImage in the memory, once you create the FastRGB instance, the memory usage would become 8MB. You can however, recycle the BufferedImage instance after you create the FastRGB.

Be careful to not fall into OutOfMemoryException when using it on devices such as Android phones, where RAM is a bottleneck

Mota's answer is great unless your BufferedImage came from a Monochrome Bitmap. A Monochrome Bitmap has only 2 possible values for its pixels (for example 0 = black and 1 = white). When a Monochrome Bitmap is used then the

final byte[] pixels = ((DataBufferByte) image.getRaster().getDataBuffer()).getData();

call returns the raw Pixel Array data in such a fashion that each byte contains more than one pixel.

So when you use a Monochrome Bitmap image to create your BufferedImage object then this is the algorithm you want to use:

/**
 * This returns a true bitmap where each element in the grid is either a 0
 * or a 1. A 1 means the pixel is white and a 0 means the pixel is black.
 * 
 * If the incoming image doesn't have any pixels in it then this method
 * returns null;
 * 
 * @param image
 * @return
 */
public static int[][] convertToArray(BufferedImage image)
{

    if (image == null || image.getWidth() == 0 || image.getHeight() == 0)
        return null;

    // This returns bytes of data starting from the top left of the bitmap
    // image and goes down.
    // Top to bottom. Left to right.
    final byte[] pixels = ((DataBufferByte) image.getRaster()
            .getDataBuffer()).getData();

    final int width = image.getWidth();
    final int height = image.getHeight();

    int[][] result = new int[height][width];

    boolean done = false;
    boolean alreadyWentToNextByte = false;
    int byteIndex = 0;
    int row = 0;
    int col = 0;
    int numBits = 0;
    byte currentByte = pixels[byteIndex];
    while (!done)
    {
        alreadyWentToNextByte = false;

        result[row][col] = (currentByte & 0x80) >> 7;
        currentByte = (byte) (((int) currentByte) << 1);
        numBits++;

        if ((row == height - 1) && (col == width - 1))
        {
            done = true;
        }
        else
        {
            col++;

            if (numBits == 8)
            {
                currentByte = pixels[++byteIndex];
                numBits = 0;
                alreadyWentToNextByte = true;
            }

            if (col == width)
            {
                row++;
                col = 0;

                if (!alreadyWentToNextByte)
                {
                    currentByte = pixels[++byteIndex];
                    numBits = 0;
                }
            }
        }
    }

    return result;
}

This worked for me:

BufferedImage bufImgs = ImageIO.read(new File("c:\\adi.bmp"));    
double[][] data = new double[][];
bufImgs.getData().getPixels(0,0,bufImgs.getWidth(),bufImgs.getHeight(),data[i]);    

If useful, try this:

BufferedImage imgBuffer = ImageIO.read(new File("c:\\image.bmp"));

byte[] pixels = (byte[])imgBuffer.getRaster().getDataElements(0, 0, imgBuffer.getWidth(), imgBuffer.getHeight(), null);

I found Mota's answer gave me a 10 times speed increase - so thanks Mota.

I've wrapped up the code in a convenient class which takes the BufferedImage in the constructor and exposes an equivalent getRBG(x,y) method which makes it a drop in replacement for code using BufferedImage.getRGB(x,y)

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.awt.image.DataBufferByte;

public class FastRGB
{

    private int width;
    private int height;
    private boolean hasAlphaChannel;
    private int pixelLength;
    private byte[] pixels;

    FastRGB(BufferedImage image)
    {

        pixels = ((DataBufferByte) image.getRaster().getDataBuffer()).getData();
        width = image.getWidth();
        height = image.getHeight();
        hasAlphaChannel = image.getAlphaRaster() != null;
        pixelLength = 3;
        if (hasAlphaChannel)
        {
            pixelLength = 4;
        }

    }

    int getRGB(int x, int y)
    {
        int pos = (y * pixelLength * width) + (x * pixelLength);

        int argb = -16777216; // 255 alpha
        if (hasAlphaChannel)
        {
            argb = (((int) pixels[pos++] & 0xff) << 24); // alpha
        }

        argb += ((int) pixels[pos++] & 0xff); // blue
        argb += (((int) pixels[pos++] & 0xff) << 8); // green
        argb += (((int) pixels[pos++] & 0xff) << 16); // red
        return argb;
    }
}