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How do I change the color of an actual JButton in Java? Not the background and not the text

button[currRow][currCol].setBackground(Color.RED);
button[currRow][currCol].setContentAreaFilled(true);
button[currRow][currCol].setOpaque(true);
That's what I have right now for my connect four game to denote a red player's move.
At the moment, it only colors the background and if I change my code to button[currRow][currCol].setForeground(Color.RED) then the whole thing just appears to not change. How would I fix this?

This is not easily achievable. The problem is that the pluggable look and feel paints the button content, and it does so in whatever way it sees fit. For instance, some L&F might paint a gradient which does not use the background color.
I suggest for a case such as yours to use a custom image (JButton.setIcon()) and no content area (JButton.setContentAreaFilled(false)).
Alternatively, you could create a custom component which draws the element itself, overriding JComponent.paintComponent().

svg brightness/transparency effects and filters (Java Android)

I'm using SVG files in my Game and i want to add transparency and brightness effects to them. So what i want is that a sprite becomes more and more transparent until it's invisible. This looks much smoother than a just disappearing sprite. This allows also smooth transitions between the levels where a white screen gets less transparent and then again more. I hope you understand what i mean. Besides this a brightness effect would be nice, too. A sprite can get brighter or darker during the game. Nevertheless i could create a workaround for this using the transparency effect, but yeah, i have none :/
I use this library:
https://androidsvg.googlecode.com/hg/doc/reference/packages.html
I render my svgs on this way:
svg.renderToCanvas(pCanvas);
However i can also convert it to pictures:
Picture pic = svg.renderToPicture();
Maybe this information will help you.
Does there exist something what could help me? And if not, have you an idea how can i solve the problem?
EDIT:So iwant my SVGs behave like these ones:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/24634091/

You could use an ImageView and setAlpha(), as Frank says. Or it may just be easier to render the sprites to the canvas in your draw() method.
If you are writing a game, then you may find that rendering SVGs in your game loop may not be fast enough. So you might have to pre-render all your SVG sprites to Bitmaps (ie on startup) and draw them to your Canvas.
Paint p = new Paint();
p.setAlpha(alpha);
canvas.drawBitmap(sprite, x,y, p);

How can I get a certain RGB value from a canvas painted with LinearGradientPaint?

I have used the LinearGradientPaint class to draw a rectangle dynamically filled with user-defined colors. This happens by overriding the paintComponent method.
Here is how it looks like:
.
You can see the small thumbs/ handle on top. The user can move these around, delete them, and add new ones. They can also change the color. As a result the user can completely customize how the gradient looks like. This works just fine so far, no issue.
What I need now, and I tried searching for this info, is to get RGB-values anywhere on this gradient.
I only know the x-amount of colors that LinearGradientPaint uses to generate the gradient. I know at what point (fraction) these colors are located (the number below the gradient box, corresponding with the 'thumbs' on top.
Is there anyway to get the colors in between the RGB-values which are used to generate the gradient? In my example above I mean the darkened red or green areas.

If this really is a linear gradient between new Color(r1,g1,b1) and new Color(r2,g2,b2), then the colour at x, where 0 <= x <= 1 is
new Color((int)(r1*(1-x)+r2*x),(int)(g1*(1-x)+g2*x),(int)(b1*(1-x)+b2*x));
Of course, I have no idea whether this is the formula that is actually used inside LinearGradientPaint - but it ought to be something equivalent to this.

A way you might be able to do this, is to create a 1 pixel high BufferedImage of the same width of your component, render the gradient to it and simple use something like BufferedImage#getRGB.
This will return a int packed color value, which you can then use Color(int) to return a Color object, which makes it easier to extract the color components of the pixel.
Of course, this would all be easier if you used the BufferedImage as your primary output as well, then you would only have to create it once and because you'd be updating the image so it could be rendered to the screen, it would also be up-to-date

Generate icon images in Java

I have a set of icon images of various sizes (16x16, 24x24, 32x32) and base colours (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow). The images are pretty basic geometric patterns + drop shadow, so my gut feeling is that it should be pretty straightforward to replace the files with an icon factory that can generate images given a base colour.
However, subclassing the Image class seems to be a lot of work - is there a better way? Just to clarify - I'm not interested in generating image files, I intend to use the Image objects directly.

What’s wrong with BufferedImage? It will give you a WritableRaster if you ask nicely. :)

If you intend to paint the images to the screen, there is a better way. Write your class to extend the Icon interface, and use the paint method to actually use the Graphics2D APIs to draw the icon. You can pass the color to the constructor. I've done this before, and it works beautifully.

Java sampling pixel color in swing

I have to create a special TextFieldUI that draws an image as the background. That image contains some alpha components. However, whenever a character is written in that text field, first it redraws the background and then draws the character. This is fine when the background contains no alpha components, but after a few characters have been typed, the alpha areas sum up to become black.
The only way I can see around this is in the paintBackground method of TextfieldUI (which I'm overriding), I have to first sample the color of the background at that location, paint the entire graphics component that color, and then paint my background.
Does anyone know how to sample the color of a pixel when all I have access to is the Graphics object?
Is there a better way to draw a custom image as the textfield background other than overriding paintBackground in TextfieldUI?
Thanks

I haven't tried it before, but Swing is built on top of AWT, and the Robot class had a way of sampling specific pixels in the AWT

Well, I don't know what your custom code looks like in the paintBackground method, but I would make sure you fill in the text field background before you draw the image.
I'll let you decide if its "better" or not, but you can use the Background Panel which allows you to add an image to a panel. Then you add the text field to the panel (the text field is automatically made non-opaque so the image shows through). Then you add the panel to the GUI.
If that doesn't work then it would be nice to have a demo of your code so we can see whats actually happening.

When you override paintBackground, you're calling the superclass version first, right? It already lays down a background-color rectangle that would give your image a fresh-start.
Rather than 'sampling' the background color, it's probably already correct (the superclass paintBackground code gets it from the parent component if not locally set). If that default is not correct, set it in initial interface construction. (Your field isn't being overlaid on other complicated arbitrary interface of unknown solid colors, is it?)