OutOfMemoryError when creating a large BufferedImage

Question

I need to create a very large tiff file which is made up of a bunch of smaller images (note: not a multi-page tiff). If I try to do it all in memory, I get an OutOfMemoryException. The image is extremely large, about 2500x123000 pixels.
I believe that the correct way to do this is create an ImageWriter whose outputStream points to a File. I'd then write an initial "background" image using writer.write(BufferedImage), then load a bunch of smaller images and append them to various places using writer.replacePixels.
My problem is the inital background image. How do I tell my ImageWriter to write a background image of 2500x123000 without creating a BufferedImage of that size in memory? Is it something to do with tiling? Is there some other way to tell my ImageWriter the dimension of the file I'm trying to write?

Answer 1

This is a hack for writing big tiff using BufferedImage with height 1.
          Iterator<ImageWriter> iter = ImageIO.getImageWritersByFormatName("TIF");
          TIFFImageWriter writer = (TIFFImageWriter) iter.next();
          ImageOutputStream stream = ImageIO.createImageOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("d:/test.tif"));
          writer.setOutput(stream);
          System.out.println(writer);
          BufferedImage image = new DummyBufferedImage(10000, 10000, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
          writer.write(image);
          writer.dispose();
          stream.close();And DummyBufferedImage:
class DummyBufferedImage extends BufferedImage {
        int dummyHeight;
        public DummyBufferedImage(int width, int height, int imageType) {
            super(width, 1, imageType);
            dummyHeight = height;
            Graphics g = createGraphics();
            g.setColor(Color.WHITE);
            g.fillRect(0, 0, getWidth(), 1);
        public int getHeight() {
            return dummyHeight;
        public Raster getData(Rectangle rect) {
            SampleModel sm = getRaster().getSampleModel();
            SampleModel nsm = sm.createCompatibleSampleModel(rect.width,
                    rect.height);
            WritableRaster wr = Raster.createWritableRaster(nsm,
                    rect.getLocation());
            int width = rect.width;
            int height = rect.height;
            int startX = rect.x;
            int startY = rect.y;
            Object tdata = null;
            for (int i = startY; i < startY+height; i++)  {
                tdata = getRaster().getDataElements(startX,i-startY,width,1,tdata);
                wr.setDataElements(startX,i,width,1, tdata);
            return wr;
    };