Creating Picture file from text. HELP

Question

If someone could point me in the right direction or give me a example; that would be Great! Thank you, in advance.
This is the case... I want to create a picture file based on the text file being read, either bipmap, jpg or any widely used picture file format. What the program will do is read a file and translate the file into a picture. Based on the parameters in the file the program will create a picture the picture will be both text and other symbols.
Thank you.

Answer 1

With javax.imageio it is very easy to save a BufferedImage, so the problem really is how to render text on a BufferedImage. Here's a short sample how one line of text can be saved into a .png image. Unfortunately laying out text, rendering multiple lines, deciding where the line should be broken etc is a little more complicated than rendering just a short bit of text, but there's a lesson on it in the Java2D tutorial at http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/2d/textandfonts/linebreakmeasure.html
and further information in the 2D graphics guide at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/2d/spec/j2d-fonts.html#wp74623
It might also be possible to get a gui component like JTextArea to handle the text layout and rendering for you.import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Font;
import java.awt.font.FontRenderContext;
import java.awt.font.GlyphVector;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.RenderingHints;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import javax.swing.*;
public class Text2PNG {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
     // The text to render
     String text = "ABCDEFG abcdefg";
     // The font to use
     Font f = new Font("Dialog", Font.PLAIN, 24);
     // Find out the bounds of the rendered text when fractional metrics and
     // antialiasing is used:
     FontRenderContext cntxt = new FontRenderContext(null, true, true);
     GlyphVector glvec = f.createGlyphVector(cntxt, text);
     Rectangle bounds = glvec.getPixelBounds(cntxt, 0, 0);
     // Set up an image that has the same size as the rendered text:
     BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(bounds.width, bounds.height,
          BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
     Graphics2D g2d = (Graphics2D) image.getGraphics();
     g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_FRACTIONALMETRICS,
                    RenderingHints.VALUE_FRACTIONALMETRICS_ON);
     g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_TEXT_ANTIALIASING,
                    RenderingHints.VALUE_TEXT_ANTIALIAS_ON);
     // Fill the background of the image with white:
     g2d.setColor(Color.WHITE);
     g2d.fillRect(0, 0, image.getWidth(), image.getHeight());
     // Render the text on the image in black:
     g2d.setFont(f);
     g2d.setColor(Color.black);
     g2d.drawGlyphVector(glvec, -bounds.x, -bounds.y);
     // Save the image as PNG to text.png:
     ImageIO.write(image, "png", new java.io.File("text.png"));
     // // Show a preview of the image (optional)
     // JLabel jl = new JLabel(new ImageIcon(image));
     // JFrame jf = new JFrame("Text to PNG");
     // jf.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
     // jf.getContentPane().add(jl);
     // jf.pack();
     // jf.setVisible(true);
}