Make a BufferedImage use less RAM?

Question

I have java program that reads a jpegfile from the harddrive and uses it as the background image for various other things. The image itself is stored in a BufferImage

Answer 1

Use imgscalr:

http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/software/imgscalr-java-image-scaling-library/

Why?

1. Follows best practices
2. Stupid simple
3. Interpolation, Anti-aliasing support
4. So you aren't rolling your own scaling library

Code:

BufferedImage thumbnail = Scalr.resize(image, 150);

or

BufferedImage thumbnail = Scalr.resize(image, Scalr.Method.SPEED, Scalr.Mode.FIT_TO_WIDTH, 150, 100, Scalr.OP_ANTIALIAS);

Also, use image.flush() on your larger image after conversion to help with the memory utilization.