Image Processing in Java – Read and Write

Java implements a particular type of object called a BufferedImage for images in Java. A BufferedImage can be read from several distinct image types (i.e., BMP, HEIC, etc.). Not all of these are backed by ImageIO itself, but there are plugins to extend ImageIO and other libraries such as Apache Imaging and JDeli.

In Java itself, all the complexity of various image types is hidden, and we only work on BufferedImage. Java provides immediate access to the image pixels and color information and allows conversions and image processing.

Classes Required to Perform the Read and Write Operations:

1. java.io.File: To read and write an image file, we must import the File class. This class represents file and directory path names in general.

2. java.io.IOException: To handle errors, we use the IOException class.

3. java.awt.image.BufferedImage: To hold the image, we create the BufferedImage object; we use BufferedImage class. This object is used to store an image in RAM.

4. javax.imageio.ImageIO: To perform the image read-write operation, we will import the ImageIO class. This class has static methods to read and write an image.