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How do I control individual pixels outside of a frame in Java?

I need a way to control individual pixels on a monitor that are not inside a frame. Is there any way I can directly change a pixel at a certain x,y to a certain colour?

Try using Java's "Full-Screen Exclusive Mode" API:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/extra/fullscreen/exclusivemode.html
In this example:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/displayCode.html?code=http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/extra/fullscreen/examples/CapabilitiesTest.java
You see a Java application acquiring the "ContentPane" container from the graphics device, then it creates a JPanel and adds it to content pane. Once you do that, you're free to override the paintComponent of the JPanel with something like this:
#Override
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
super.paintComponent(g);
g.drawRect(50, 50, 50, 50);
}
You can of course set whatever you draw to any color, and you can draw something other than a rectangle too.
The drawback is, you don't get transparency, in case you're looking to draw ONLY that pixel and leave the rest of the screen preserved. This StackOverflow question investigates this issue further: java fullscreen window with transparency

panel with image background and mouse draw

How can I use a image as background in a JPanel if the paint () method is already used for other purposes? (I'm tried to draw over a image in a panel).
Here is my code to draw as a pencil, but I don´t know how to add the image as background ?
#Override
public void paint(Graphics g) {
if (x >= 0 && y >= 0) {
g.setColor(Color.BLACK);
g.fillRect(x, y, 4, 4);
}
}
Thanks Diego

Suggestions:
Don't draw in the JPanel's paint(...) method but rather use it's paintComponent(...) method. There are several reasons for this, one being that if you use the paint(...) method, then you are also responsible for drawing the JPanel's borders and child components and at risk of messing up the rendering of these guys. Also you lose Swing's automatic double buffering.
First call the parent class's super method before calling any other code in the method. This will allow the JPanel to refresh its background and do any graphics housekeeping that may need to be done.
Next draw your background image using g.drawImage(...),
Then do your pencil drawing.

Hovercraft Full Of Eels gave good advice on one direction to take. Here is another.
Display the image in a (ImageIcon in a) JLabel.
When it comes time to paint:
Call createGraphics() on the BufferedImage to gain a Graphics2D object.
paint the lines or other visual elements to the graphics instance.
dispose of the graphics instance.
Call repaint() on the label.
E.G. as seen in this answer.

Fading a portion of Graphics in Java Swing

I am trying to implement the fade in/fade out animation in swing.
I am using a JPanel which does not have any components in it. It is completely drawn by paintComponent() method.
Now in one of the portion of this JPanel, I want to implement the fade in/fade-out animation. When I tried using AlphaComposite, the animation is being triggered for whole JPanel.
Can I limit this animation in a small clipped region in that panel?
Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g;
g2d.setComposite(AlphaComposite.getInstance(
AlphaComposite.XOR, alpha));

Have you tried using an Graphics object (like rectangle, circle etc..) for your fade in/out? That way it won't be triggered for the complete panel.
Good luck!

Perhaps, but that may be more difficult to achieve than what it's worth. Create a JComponent of the size you want to animate (or fade), add it to your JPanel, and have repaint() called on your smaller component during animation instead of the larger JPanel.

You can use setClip() before painting to restrict the fading area.
Suppose you want a small fading rectangle. Using Area class create 2 Shapes. Intersection of original clip and fading rect and subtraction (subtract the fading rectangle from the original clip).
Call super.paintComponent() twice with 2 different clips. For the second paint you can set your alpha filter.

Can we tilt a JPanel at an angle?

I have image inside the JPanel. I would like to rotate the image. Is it possible to rotate the JPanel using Graphics, Image is rotatable, Just out of curiosity is it possible to rotate JPanel ?

Yes! This is possible and fairly straightforward too. I haven't done rotations but I have done other affine transformations (scaling the entire GUI up and down) very successfully on a project. I cannot see why rotations should be any different.
Instead of trying to scale each component use the fact that you can set a transformation on the Graphics object. Since this is shared between all components being rendered you get all things transformed at once "for free". It is important to realize that the transformation is only a rendering-process-step ... i.e. all components still believe they have the bounds (locations+sizes) which you gave them in the untransformed world. This leaves us with the challenge to deal with mouse-events correctly. To do this you simply add a glass-pane in front of your main-panel. This pane collects all mouse-events and apply a reverse of the transform on the event and then sends the event onward towards all other components.
Conceptually very simple! Still, I remember it took some tweaking to get it all crisp though. Especially the fact that rendered texts (fonts) in java are not correctly linearly scaled (it scales in discrete steps corresponding to font-sizes) imposed a final challenge in my scale-affine-transformation-case. Maybe you don't have to worry about that if you only rotate.
I got my inspiration from JXTransformer: http://www.java.net/blog/alexfromsun/archive/2006/07/jxtransformer_t.html

As far as I know you can't rotate a JPanel itself but you might be able to rotate the image inside the JPanel using Java2D. Here's an article that might help.
Edit:
There might actually be a way to rotate JComponents (such as JPanel) if you override their paintXxx methods and use AffineTransform.

It's not possible to rotate JPanel itself, but it's certainly possible to rotate any image inside. There are quite a few ways to do that, you can - for example - override JPanel's public void paint(Graphics g) and then cast Graphics to Graphics2D. It's very useful class, does rotation and much more ;) Check api docs for more info about this one.

Yes, it is possible. But you won't rotate the panel, but the image:
public void paintComponent(Graphics gg)
{
Graphics2D g = (Graphics2D) gg;
g.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTI_ALIAS, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTI_ALIAS_ON);
AfflineTransform matrix = g.getTransform(); // Backup
float angle = Math.PI / 4.0f; // 45°
g.rotate(angle);
/* Begin */
g.drawImage(yourImage, [your coordinates], null);
/* End */
g.setTranform(matrix); // Restore
}
Everything between /* Begin */ and /* End */ will be drawn rotated.
(I didn't test the code, so, they may be some syntax errors...)

can we zoom in zoom out the drawing we draw on the Canvas?

We have an old (more than 10yrs old) Java Swing applicatin which draws lots of circles and connections (lines) between those circles on a JCanvas (a subclass of JComponent) based on lab data.
Because the data becames bigger and bigger, we cannot display the entire drawing now. We have put the JCavans into a JScrollPane but it is not convenience to scroll the drawing.
Can we add zoom in zoom out for it? if yes, how? I know we can zoom image but the drawing on Canvas is an image?
thanks,
EDIT:
we draw those circles and line with Graphics within paintComponent(Graphics g) method.

You could apply a scaling Transform to the Graphics2D object passed to the paintComponent method. You can learn how to use it in the Java 2D programming trail.

Without knowing anything about your application it's hard to provide useful advice (adding a code snippet or better yet a cutdown example app would be helpful to show how things are being drawn), but I'll give it a shot:
Why don't you multiply the x,y and width,height values by a scaling factor before you draw each circle/line? I assume that somewhere your canvas is using a Graphics object to draw each shape?