Copy BufferedImage to clipboard

Question

How do I store a BufferedImage into the system clipboard?

Answer 1

Here is working code taken from here tested successfully

package org.life.java.so.questions;

/**
 * @author Jigar
 */
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.datatransfer.*;
import java.awt.image.*;
import java.io.*;

public class CopyImagetoClipBoard implements ClipboardOwner {
    public CopyImagetoClipBoard() {
        try {
            Robot robot = new Robot();
            Dimension screenSize  = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize();
            Rectangle screen = new Rectangle( screenSize );
            BufferedImage i = robot.createScreenCapture( screen );
            TransferableImage trans = new TransferableImage( i );
            Clipboard c = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
            c.setContents( trans, this );
        }
        catch ( AWTException x ) {
            x.printStackTrace();
            System.exit( 1 );
        }
    }

    public static void main( String[] arg ) {
        CopyImagetoClipBoard ci = new CopyImagetoClipBoard();
    }

    public void lostOwnership( Clipboard clip, Transferable trans ) {
        System.out.println( "Lost Clipboard Ownership" );
    }

    private class TransferableImage implements Transferable {

        Image i;

        public TransferableImage( Image i ) {
            this.i = i;
        }

        public Object getTransferData( DataFlavor flavor )
        throws UnsupportedFlavorException, IOException {
            if ( flavor.equals( DataFlavor.imageFlavor ) && i != null ) {
                return i;
            }
            else {
                throw new UnsupportedFlavorException( flavor );
            }
        }

        public DataFlavor[] getTransferDataFlavors() {
            DataFlavor[] flavors = new DataFlavor[ 1 ];
            flavors[ 0 ] = DataFlavor.imageFlavor;
            return flavors;
        }

        public boolean isDataFlavorSupported( DataFlavor flavor ) {
            DataFlavor[] flavors = getTransferDataFlavors();
            for ( int i = 0; i < flavors.length; i++ ) {
                if ( flavor.equals( flavors[ i ] ) ) {
                    return true;
                }
            }

            return false;
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

Jigar's code does indeed store a BufferedImage into the clipboard, although to be specific, it puts a screen-capture of the entire screen into the clipboard.

This may or may not be what you were after. In case you wanted to copy your own specific BufferedImage, in order to accomplish this, I replaced the constructor from Jigar's example with a copyImage() method.

public class CopyImagetoClipBoard implements ClipboardOwner
{
    public void copyImage(BufferedImage bi)
    {
        TransferableImage trans = new TransferableImage( bi );
        Clipboard c = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
        c.setContents( trans, this );
    }

Remove the main() method within his class too.

You can then copy your BufferedImage with code such as this:

    BufferedImage bim;
    // set bim to your desired BufferedImage content
    // ...
    CopyImagetoClipBoard ci = new CopyImagetoClipBoard();
    ci.copyImage(bim);