I have two BufferedImages I loaded in from pngs. The first contains an image, the second an alpha mask for the image.
I want to create a combined image from the two, by applying the alpha mask. My google-fu fails me.
I know how to load/save the images, I just need the bit where I go from two BufferedImages to one BufferedImage with the right alpha channel.
Your solution could be improved by fetching the RGB data more than one pixel at a time(see http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/awt/image/BufferedImage.html), and by not creating three Color objects on every iteration of the inner loop.
final int width = image.getWidth();
int[] imgData = new int[width];
int[] maskData = new int[width];
for (int y = 0; y < image.getHeight(); y++) {
// fetch a line of data from each image
image.getRGB(0, y, width, 1, imgData, 0, 1);
mask.getRGB(0, y, width, 1, maskData, 0, 1);
// apply the mask
for (int x = 0; x < width; x++) {
int color = imgData[x] & 0x00FFFFFF; // mask away any alpha present
int maskColor = (maskData[x] & 0x00FF0000) << 8; // shift red into alpha bits
color |= maskColor;
imgData[x] = color;
}
// replace the data
image.setRGB(0, y, width, 1, imgData, 0, 1);
}