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How to fade out the edges of a Java2D Area object?

I have a method that creates shadows based on where things are on the screen and the final product of that method is an Area, which I then draw onto the screen and it contains all shadows on screen in the same Area. This is because the drawn shadows are a low opacity so if it is not all one thing they will overlap and the opacity will make it look weird.
The issue that I want the shadows to look like they fade out, but I have absolutely no idea how, or if that would even be possible. Is there a way to soften the edges of the Area or make them gradient fade out? I tried to do graphics2D.setPaint(new GradientPaint[a gradient effect]) but it did nothing.
Thanks in advance
EDIT: Here is a screenshot of the program making a shadow around a 'building' rectangle. The green rectangle is to show the effect of the shadow. The end result I want is instead of the shadow abruptly ending, it should fade out.

i guess you have problems setting up the proper colors for the gradient:
#Override
protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
super.paintComponent(g);
g.setColor(Color.GREEN);
g.fillRect(30, 30, 50, 20);
Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) g;
Polygon p = new Polygon(new int[]{10,20,50,50,40,10}, new int[]{10,10,40,50,50,20}, 6);
Area a = new Area(p);
Color b = new Color(0xFF000000, true); //using colors with transparency!!!
Color w = new Color(0x00FFFFFF, true); //using colors with transparency!!!
//try to use proper values for the x/y values - both, start and end
GradientPaint gradient = new GradientPaint(0, 0, b, 40, 40, w);
g2d.setPaint(gradient);
g2d.fill(a); // fill your area!
}
result is a gradient with alpha (Transparency) ...
Area drawn in red <==> Area drawn with Gradient
don't forget to set the alpha value 0xAARRGGBB to FF for 100% opaque (0xFF000000 is black 100%opaque) to 0 (0x00FFFFFF white, 100% transparent)

Trying to do a spotlight effect in android canvas

I have a canvas and a simple bitmap for background image, fills the whole screen. I created a rect painted black and set it's alpha to 250 in order to make a "dark" effect on the background image. My aim to make a simple circle object that reveals the place it's hovering above. I tried thinking in many ways how to excecute it and failed.
I think the best way is to create a simple circle that manages to decrease the darkness alpha on the position it hovers above, but I have no idea how to do it.
The relevant part of my code:
private ColorFilter filter = new LightingColorFilter(Color.BLACK, 1);
private Paint darkPaint = new Paint(Color.BLACK), paint = new Paint(), paint2 = new Paint();//The style of the text and dark.
public DarkRoomView(Context context) {
super(context);
myChild = this;
darkPaint.setColorFilter(filter);
darkPaint.setAlpha(250);
paint2.setAlpha(10);
paint.setAlpha(50);
}
private void loadGFX() {//Loads all of this view GFX file.
backgroundImage = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.darkroomscreen);
lightImage = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.light);
}
private void drawGFX(Canvas canvas) {
canvas.drawBitmap(backgroundImage, 0, 0, paint2);//The backgeound image.
canvas.drawRect(0, 0, WIDTH, HEIGHT, darkPaint);//The darkness.
canvas.drawBitmap(lightImage, 50, 50, paint);//A spotlight.
}
Any ideas how I should get it done?
Thanks!

For the spotlight, you could draw a circle of the original image over the darkness. You'd simply need to find the correct rectangle of the original image (based on where your finger is), and then draw a circle of that particular rectangle over the darkness. Trying to look "through" the darkness won't really get you anywhere; you need to place something over it.

By the time you draw the "spotlight", you've already darkened the image with the rectangle. It would be difficult to recover information lost during that draw.
A more flexible approach would be to draw a dark rectangle with a spotlight in a separate image (that is, compose the "darkness" and spotlight alpha and color mask image first), and then draw that mask image on top of the background as a separate step. This would also let you easily do things like e.g. give the spotlight fuzzy borders.

Creating an Image that is completely transparent

I want to create an Image object which is absolutely transparent. The JFrame method
createImage(int x, int y);
is totally useless, because it creates a white rectangle, not a transparent one. In the past, I loaded in a PNG file that was transparent, but there must be a simpler way to do it.

Have you looked at BufferedImage? It is a base class for working with images in standard java. It supports ARGB image types that includes alpha channel (transparency) along with standard RGB.
You can try something like this to create transparent image:
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(100, 100, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
Graphics gr = image.getGraphics();
gr.setColor(new Color(0, 0, 0, 0)); // last component is alpha channel.
// 0 - transparent, 255 - opaque
gr.fillRect(0, 0, 100, 100):
// Now image is transparent
I didn't test it but it should work.

Why doesn't BufferedImage of type TYPE_INT_ARGB support the AlphaComposite.CLEAR rule? [duplicate]

I have an off-screen BufferedImage, constructed with the type BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB. It can contain anything, and I'm looking for a way to (fairly efficiently) completely overwrite the image with transparent pixels, resulting in an 'invisible' image.
Using something like this:
(bufimg.getGraphics()).setColor(new Color(10, 10, 100, 0));
(bufimg.getGraphics()).fillRect (0, 0, x, y);
Has no effect. One possible method might be just to write over every pixel in the BufferedImage, but I'm not sure this is the best solution. How would you do it?
[edit]
The Graphics documentation advises against using clearRect for off-screen images, but I have tried it with the same results as above.
[edit2]
After experimenting with MeBigFatGuy's code (thanks!), it does clear an image. But it also stops further painting to that image (or appears to). This code for example:
BufferedImage img = new BufferedImage (600, 600, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
Graphics g = img.createGraphics ()
g.drawLine (100, 100, 500, 500);
AlphaComposite composite = AlphaComposite.getInstance(AlphaComposite.CLEAR, 0.0f);
g.setComposite(composite);
g.setColor(new Color(0, 0, 0, 0));
g.fillRect(0, 0, 600, 600);
graphicsAI.setColor(new Color (10, 10, 10, 255));
graphicsAI.drawLine (100, 100, 500, 500);
Results in nothing seen on the image (I'm drawing the image to a JPanel). Is this something to do with the addition of alpha values?

After you clear the background with the CLEAR composite, you need to set it back to SRC_OVER to draw normally again. ex:
//clear
g2.setComposite(AlphaComposite.getInstance(AlphaComposite.CLEAR));
g2.fillRect(0,0,256,256);
//reset composite
g2.setComposite(AlphaComposite.getInstance(AlphaComposite.SRC_OVER));
//draw
g2.setPaint(Color.RED);
g2.fillOval(50,50,100,100);

You could get the underlying int[] array of your BufferedImage (make sure to use a compatible format: that is, one that is backed by an int[]).
Then fill the int[] with ints whose alpha value are 0 (0 will do ; )
A System.arraycopy will be very fast.
You have to know that directly writing in the int[] is a lot faster than using setRGB.
Now BufferedImage are a bit of a black art in Java: depending on what you're doing and on which platform/JVM you're doing it, you may lose hardware acceleration (which may never have been there in the first place anyway). In addition to that, you may very well not care at all about hardware acceleration anyway because you may not be working on, say, a game requiring 60+ FPS to be playable etc.
This is a very complicated topic and there's more than one way to skin the BufferedImage cat. As far as I'm concerned I work directly in the int[] when I've got to mess at the pixel level because I think it makes much more sense than trying to use higher-level drawing primitives and I do really don't care about the potential lost of hardware acceleration.

If you cast the Graphics object to a Graphics2D object, you can set a Composite object thru
AlphaComposite composite = AlphaComposite.getInstance(AlphaComposite.CLEAR, 0.0f);
Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) image.getGraphics();
g2d.setComposite(composite);
g2d.setColor(new Color(0, 0, 0, 0));
g2d.fillRect(0, 0, 10, 10);

For the sake of completeness, here is a working, testing, and fast function that is cross-platform compliant.
static public BufferedImage createTransparentBufferedImage(int width, int height) {
// BufferedImage is actually already transparent on my system, but that isn't
// guaranteed across platforms.
BufferedImage bufferedImage = new BufferedImage(width, height,
BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
Graphics2D graphics = bufferedImage.createGraphics();
// To be sure, we use clearRect, which will (unlike fillRect) totally replace
// the current pixels with the desired color, even if it's fully transparent.
graphics.setBackground(new Color(0, true));
graphics.clearRect(0, 0, width, height);
graphics.dispose();
return bufferedImage;
}

Despite you saying it doesn't work, I used clearRect quite fine.
Clears the specified rectangle by filling it with the background color
of the current drawing surface. This operation does not use the
current paint mode.
Beginning with Java 1.1, the background color of offscreen images may
be system dependent. Applications should use setColor followed by
fillRect to ensure that an offscreen image is cleared to a specific
color.
Fills the specified rectangle. The left and right edges of the
rectangle are at x and x + width - 1. The top and bottom edges are at
y and y + height - 1. The resulting rectangle covers an area width
pixels wide by height pixels tall. The rectangle is filled using the
graphics context's current color.
It is not clearly stated here that one will set the rectangle to the background color, while the other will paint with the foreground color on top of the current colors, but it's what it seems to do.
This is pure speculation, but I think the note about offscreen images relates to Graphics objects obtained from offscreen AWT components, as they are native. I can hardly imagine how the background color of a BufferedImage could be system dependent. As the API doc is for Graphics, this could be a generalization not applying to the BufferedImage case.
My testing code:
JFrame jf = new JFrame();
jf.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
BufferedImage img = new BufferedImage(200, 300, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
Graphics2D g = img.createGraphics();
//fill right half with opaque white
g.setColor(Color.WHITE);
g.fillRect(100, 0, 100, 300);
//leave top third as it is
//fill middle third with transparent color
g.setColor(new Color(0, true));
g.fillRect(0, 100, 200, 100);
//clear bottom third with transparent color
g.setBackground(new Color(0, true));
g.clearRect(0, 200, 200, 100);
g.dispose();
jf.add(new JLabel(new ImageIcon(img)));
jf.pack();
jf.setVisible(true);
the result is two white squares, top right. Where no white was painted, or clearRect was used to overwrite the white, the result is a light gray, the frame's default background color.
Performance-wise, it's regular drawing. arraycopy might well be faster, I don't know, but at least this is likely hardware accelerated just as any other drawing operation.
A plus point versus the array solution is a) no additional memory and b) independence from the color model; this should work no matter how the image was set up.
A minus point versus the Composite solution is that it only allows clearing rectangles; setting the composite allows you to clear any kind of shape.

Setting the background of the graphics Object seems to do the job:
g.setBackground(new Color(0, 0, 0, 0));
(at least when drawing images for scaling purposes)

BufferedImage INT / 4BYTE / USHORT

I know the difference in memory usage between byte, unsigned short, and integer, but when it comes to a BufferedImage, is there a 'speed' difference between them?
I have been using the Image type in my code to store images, but I require an alpha layer. Using BufferedImage provides me with ARGB, but my code is /considerably/ slower after making the change from the Image type (and it was only changed for a few objects), so I'm looking for all the performance improvement I can get.
I'm not sure how stupid of a question this may be, so I thank you in response for any replies.

Tanaki,
I have found that, when in need of using an alpha channel in a BufferedImage, the best is to premultiply the alpha channel. For example:
// Create an ARGB image
BufferedImage bi = new BufferedImage(512, 512, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
Graphics2D g = bi.createGraphics();
// Fill the background (for illustration)
g.setColor(Color.black);
g.fill(new Rectangle(0, 0, 512, 512));
AlphaComposite alpha = AlphaComposite.getInstance(AlphaComposite.SRC_OVER, 0.4f));
// Keep the original composite
Composite original = g.getComposite();
g.setComposite(alpha);
// Paint with transparency
Rectangle r = new Rectangle(100, 200, 50, 50);
g.setColor(Color.magenta);
g.fillRect(r);
g.setComposite(original);
// ... paint further shapes or images as necessary
// ...
g.dispose();
// Convert to a premultiplied alpha image for fast painting to a Canvas
BufferedImage biPre = new BufferedImage(512, 512, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB_PRE);
Graphics2D gPre = biPre.createGraphics();
gPre.drawImage(bi, 0, 0, null);
gPre.dispose();
// clean up:
bi.flush();
// Now use biPre for painting to a Canvas, or a Component.
// ...
// Remember to flush it when done!
biPre.flush();
The reason for painting first to a TYPE_INT_ARGB is to ensure that all alpha gets painted as you expected (not pre-multiplied every time!). Then, when done, paint the whole image onto a TYPE_INT_ARGB_PRE, which is then able to bring the data to the screen with good speed.