Fastest way to draw Pixel at a time?

Question

so far, from what ive seen, an applet is fairly fast for creating and displaying images, im working with a fairly new shading method(its like a year old, which is fairly new compared to the other 4 or so shading methods), but this requires me to draw pixel at a time, im only drawing each pixel once(not drawing over the same pixel when drawing another shape) so everything is calculated before the pixels are set and drawn. the only way from which i can see with a standard graphics object i can see to draw a pixel(or a point) would be to draw a line with the same start and end point or to draw a rectangle with a width and lenght of 1 pixel(both of these methods for drawing a point are a little slower than i want them to be). ive tried using a Buffered Image in a JFrame, setting each pixel one at a time, then updating the frame to display the new image, but that has proven to be fairly slow, so is there any way(faster than using an applet) to draw pixels one at a time?

Answer 1

what does the array parameter of setPixel in the WritableRaster class do?Depends on the type of buffered image you are using. I gave you an example of using a grey scale. 0 is black, 255 is white and you can have shades of grey in between.
how can i use it to set the color i want? Above example doesn't help since you want more colors. So you would use a different type:
BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);Now you need 3 entries in the array to specify the color. So to set a pixel red you would use:
int[] pixelColor = new int[3];
pixelColor[0] = 255;
pixelColor[1] = 0;
pixelColor[2] = 0;Here is a modified example that builds the image completely from an array:
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.image.*;
import javax.swing.*;
public class ImageFromArray2 extends JFrame
     int width = 50;
     int height = 50;
     int imageSize = width * height;
     public ImageFromArray2()
          JPanel panel = new JPanel();
          getContentPane().add( panel );
          int[] pixels = new int[imageSize * 3];
          //  Create Red Image
          for (int i = 0; i < imageSize * 3; i += 3)
               pixels[i] = 255;
               pixels[i+1] = 0;
               pixels[i+2] = 0;
          panel.add( createImageLabel(pixels) );
          //  Create Green Image
          for (int i = 0; i < imageSize * 3; i += 3)
               pixels[i] = 0;
               pixels[i+1] = 255;
               pixels[i+2] = 0;
          panel.add( createImageLabel(pixels) );
          //  Create Blue Image
          for (int i = 0; i < imageSize * 3; i += 3)
               pixels[i] = 0;
               pixels[i+1] = 0;
               pixels[i+2] = 255;
          panel.add( createImageLabel(pixels) );
     private JLabel createImageLabel(int[] pixels)
          BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(width, height, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
          WritableRaster raster = image.getRaster();
          raster.setPixels(0, 0, width, height, pixels);
          JLabel label = new JLabel( new ImageIcon(image) );
          return label;
     public static void main(String args[])
          JFrame frame = new ImageFromArray2();
          frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
          frame.pack();
          frame.setLocationRelativeTo( null );
          frame.setVisible( true );
}