Rotating an Image object

Question

I have a method getImage() that needs to rotate an Image, store it in a new variable, then return that new Image. Here is my attempt, the image appears to be empty or something. It just does not show up on the screen:

public Image getImage() {
    buffImage.createGraphics().rotate(direction);
    return buffImage;
}

When I take out the buffImage.createGraphics().rotate(direction); the image draws on the screen just fine with no problems but of course, not rotated.

Answer 1

So, based on the example in this answer, you should be able to devise a rotation method which can rotate a source image by a given number of degrees, for example...

  // Make sure you actually load some image and assign it to this
  // variable, otherwise you will have a NullPointerException to 
  // deal with
  private BufferedImage source;

  public Image rotateBy(double degrees) {

    // The size of the original image
    int w = source.getWidth();
    int h = source.getHeight();
    // The angel of the rotation in radians
    double rads = Math.toRadians(degrees);
    // Some nice math which demonstrates I have no idea what I'm talking about
    // Okay, this calculates the amount of space the image will need in
    // order not be clipped when it's rotated
    double sin = Math.abs(Math.sin(rads));
    double cos = Math.abs(Math.cos(rads));
    int newWidth = (int) Math.floor(w * cos + h * sin);
    int newHeight = (int) Math.floor(h * cos + w * sin);

    // A new image, into which the original can be painted
    BufferedImage rotated = new BufferedImage(newWidth, newHeight, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);
    Graphics2D g2d = rotated.createGraphics();
    // The transformation which will be used to actually rotate the image
    // The translation, actually makes sure that the image is positioned onto
    // the viewable area of the image
    AffineTransform at = new AffineTransform();
    at.translate((newWidth - w) / 2, (newHeight - h) / 2);

    // And we rotate about the center of the image...
    int x = w / 2;
    int y = h / 2;
    at.rotate(rads, x, y);
    g2d.setTransform(at);
    // And we paint the original image onto the new image
    g2d.drawImage(source, 0, 0, null);
    g2d.dispose();

    return rotated;
  }

Answer 2

You could just use a Rotated Icon and display the Icon in a JLabel.

The Rotated Icon is a reusable class so you don't need to worry about about adding the rotation code to every class where you need this functionality.