How does pixelgrabber store the pixels?

Question

i used pixelgrabber like so in an applet
Image ball = getImage(getCodeBase(), "bball.gif");
int w = ball.getWidth(this);
int h = ball.getHeight(this);
int[] pixels = new int[w * h];
PixelGrabber pg=new PixelGrabber(ball,0,0,w,h,pixels,0,w);
try{
pg.grabPixels();
}catch (InterruptedException e) {}
when i go used a for loop to print out all the elements of pixels[] 1 by 1, i get something like this.
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-2697514
-2697514
-4868683
-5395027
-8684677
-8684677
-5921371
-5395027
-3223858
-2697514
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
-1
now, this basketball image is fills up most of the 64x64 space, its mostly orange with black borders (as you would expect). but why do i get so many -1's (-1 is FFFFFFFF, which is white)?

Answer 1

From the PixelGrabber docs:
  int alpha = (pixel >> 24) & 0xff;
  int red   = (pixel >> 16) & 0xff;
  int green = (pixel >>  8) & 0xff;
  int blue  = (pixel      ) & 0xff;I've used this in code that slices an image into a 10x10 grid and
figures out the "main color" in each cell. Do it twice, compare
the result and you can tell if Image A is a scaled version of Image B.
Given that my code works, I'd have to say that the storage described
here is accurate !
Hope this helps !