Chapter 3. The Graphicizer Image-Editing and Conversion Tool

The Graphicizer application.

The Graphicizer is a very cool image-handling tool that lets you load in images, manipulate them, and save them back to disk. It'll convert image formats too—you can use the Graphicizer to load in JPEG, PNG, or GIF images and then store them in either JPEG or PNG format. When an image is loaded, you can convert it to an embossed image with the click of a button, or you can sharpen it, brighten it, blur it, or reduce its size—all using Java. You can even undo the most recent change.

Not bad.

You can see the Graphicizer at work in Figure 3.1, where it has loaded in a sample image that comes with the book's code, image.gif. To emboss this image, sharpen it, or perform other actions, all you've got to do is click a button.

Here are some of the things this application does:

• Reads in JPG, PNG, or GIF files

• Saves images in JPG or PNG format

• Lets you work with images, pixel by pixel

• Embosses images

• Sharpens images

• Brighten images

• Blurs images

• Changes image size

• Undoes the most recent change on request

How do you create this application and get it running? As you'd expect, the first step is to create the main Graphicizer window, which acts as a canvas to display the image under design, as you see in Figure 3.1.