Creating custom JButton from images containing transparent pixels

Question

Read edit 2 for what I'm actually missing to make it work

I'm currently trying to create some custom JButtons using images created in photoshop that have an alpha parameter.

So far, overriding the paint() method to draw the image has worked in the sense that the button is drawn showing the correct image. I'd like to improve it, though, by making its shape (clickable area) the same as the visible pixels on the image (right now if I draw the button's border, it's a square).

Is there an easy way to do that or do I have to parse the image and find the alpha pixels to make a custom border?

Which methods would I have to override to make it work the way I want?

Also, another question I'm going to have later: would it be better to use some kind of algorithm to change the images' colors to make it seem like it is being clicked when people click on it or am I better off creating a second image and drawing that one while the button is active?

Edit: I just read on some other question that I should redefine paintComponent() instead of paint(), I'd like to know why since redefining paint() works fine?

Edit 2: I changed everything to make sure my JButtons are created using the default constructor with an icon. What I'm trying to do is get the X and Y position of where the click was registered and grab the icon's pixel at that position and check its alpha channel to see if it is 0 (if it is, do nothing, else do the action it is supposed to do).

The thing is, the alpha channel always returns 255 (and blue, red and green are at 238 on transparent pixels). On other pixels, everything returns the value it should be returning.

Here's an example (try it with another image if you want) that recreates my problem:

public class TestAlphaPixels extends JFrame
{
  private final File FILECLOSEBUTTON = new File("img\\boutonrondX.png");  //My round button with transparent corners
  private JButton closeButton = new JButton(); //Creating it empty to be able to place it and resize the image after the button size is known


  public TestAlphaPixels() throws IOException
  {
    setLayout(null);
    setSize(150, 150);

    closeButton.setSize(100, 100);
    closeButton.setContentAreaFilled(false);
    closeButton.setBorderPainted(false);

    add(closeButton);

    closeButton.addMouseListener(new MouseListener()
      {

        public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e)
        {
        }

        public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e)
        {
        }

        public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e)
        {
          System.out.println("Alpha value of pixel (" + e.getX() + ", " + e.getY() + ") is: " + clickAlphaValue(closeButton.getIcon(), e.getX(), e.getY()));
        }

        public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e)
        {
        }

        public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e)
        {
        }
      });
    Image imgCloseButton = ImageIO.read(FILECLOSEBUTTON);

    //Resize the image to fit the button
    Image newImg = imgCloseButton.getScaledInstance((int)closeButton.getSize().getWidth(), (int)closeButton.getSize().getHeight(), java.awt.Image.SCALE_SMOOTH);
    closeButton.setIcon(new ImageIcon(newImg));


  }

  private int clickAlphaValue(Icon icon, int posX, int posY) 
  {
    int width = icon.getIconWidth();
    int height = icon.getIconHeight();

    BufferedImage tempImage = (BufferedImage)createImage(width, height);
    Graphics2D g = tempImage.createGraphics();

    icon.paintIcon(null, g, 0, 0);

    g.dispose();

    int alpha = (tempImage.getRGB(posX, posY) >> 24) & 0x000000FF;

    return alpha;
  } 
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    try
    {
      TestAlphaPixels testAlphaPixels = new TestAlphaPixels();
      testAlphaPixels.setVisible(true);
      testAlphaPixels.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
    }
    catch(IOException ioe)
    {
      ioe.printStackTrace();
    }
  }
}

This is just a wild guess, but is it possible that when my image gets cast to an Icon, it loses its Alpha property and thus doesn't return the correct value? Anyway, I'd really appreciate it if someone could actually help me out and tell me what I should be changing to get the correct value.

I'm guessing that because when I try it with the original image, the alpha channel's value is fine, but I can't actually use that BufferedImage because I resize it, so I actually get the channel values of the image with the original size...

Answer 1

Since there were good elements in multiple answers, but none of the answers were complete on their own, I'll answer my own question so other people that have the same problem can try something similar.

I created my buttons using a new class which extends JButton, with a new constructor that takes a BufferedImage as parameter instead of an icon. The reason for that is that when I did something like myButton.getIcon(), it would return an Icon, then I'd have to make various manipulations on it to make it a BufferedImage of the right size, and it ended up not working anyway because it seems like the first cast to Icon made it lose the alpha data in the pixels, so I couldn't check to see if the user was clicking on transparent pixels or not.

So I did something like this for the constructor:

public class MyButton extends JButton
{
   private BufferedImage bufImg;

   public MyButton(BufferedImage bufImg)
   {
      super(new ImageIcon(bufImg));
      this.bufImg = bufImg;
   }
 }

Then I created an accessor for my bufImg that resized the image to fit the JButton using the getSize() method and then returned an image resized at the right size. I do the transformations in the getBufImg() accessor because the image size might change when the window gets resized. When you call the getBufImg(), it's usually because you clicked on the button and thus you're not currently resizing the window.

Something a little bit like this will return the image at the right size:

 public BufferedImage getBufImg()
    {
      BufferedImage newImg = new BufferedImage(getSize().getWidth(), getSize().getHeight(), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB); //Create a new buffered image the right size
      Graphics2D g2d = newImg.createGraphics();
      g2d.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_INTERPOLATION, RenderingHints.VALUE_INTERPOLATION_BILINEAR);

      g2d.drawImage(bufImg, 0, 0, getSize().getWidth(), getSize().getHeight(), null);
      g2d.dispose();

      return newImg;
    }

With that buffered image, you can then code a method like this:

  private int clickAlphaValue(BufferedImage bufImg, int posX, int posY) 
  {
    int alpha;

    alpha = (bufImg.getRGB(posX, posY) >>24) & 0x000000FF; //Gets the bit that contains alpha information

    return alpha;
  }

That you call on the button that implements a MouseListener, like this:

myButton.addMouseListener(new MouseListener()
    {

    public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e)
    {
    }

    public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e)
    {
    }

    public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e)
    {
      if(clickAlphaValue(((myButton)e.getSource()).getBufImg(), e.getX(), e.getY()) != 0) //If alpha is not set to 0
        System.exit(0); //Or other things you want your button to do
    }

    public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e)
    {
    }

    public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e)
    {
    }
  });

And voila! The button will only do the action if you clicked on non-transparent pixels.

Thanks for the help everyone, I couldn't have come up with this solutions on my own.