Cut out image in shape of text

Question

I need to cut out an image in the shape of the text in another image. I think it's best shown in images.

This is a photo of a cat:

and this is the text I wish to cut out:

The resulting image would be this:

The text image will always be black with a transparent background, and the resulting cut-out should too have a transparent background. Both input images will also be the same size.

Answer 1

import java.awt.*; import java.awt.font.*; import java.awt.image.BufferedImage; import java.awt.geom.Rectangle2D; import javax.imageio.ImageIO; import java.net.URL; import java.io.File;  class PictureText {      public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {         URL url = new URL("http://i.stack.imgur.com/Nqf3H.jpg");         BufferedImage originalImage = ImageIO.read(url);         final BufferedImage textImage = new BufferedImage(             originalImage.getWidth(),             originalImage.getHeight(),             BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB);         Graphics2D g = textImage.createGraphics();         FontRenderContext frc = g.getFontRenderContext();         Font font = new Font(Font.SANS_SERIF, Font.BOLD, 250);         GlyphVector gv = font.createGlyphVector(frc, "Cat");         Rectangle2D box = gv.getVisualBounds();         int xOff = 25+(int)-box.getX();         int yOff = 80+(int)-box.getY();         Shape shape = gv.getOutline(xOff,yOff);         g.setClip(shape);         g.drawImage(originalImage,0,0,null);         g.setClip(null);         g.setStroke(new BasicStroke(2f));         g.setColor(Color.BLACK);         g.setRenderingHint(             RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING,             RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);         g.draw(shape);          g.dispose();          File file = new File("cat-text.png");         ImageIO.write(textImage,"png",file);         Desktop.getDesktop().open(file);     } } 

Answer 2

Create a new BufferedImage and iterate over all the pixels of word cat and if they are black, copy the cat-image pixels to the new image.

Here is some code: (Final working code, supports anti-alias)

public static BufferedImage textEffect(BufferedImage image, BufferedImage text) {     if (image.getWidth() != text.getWidth() ||         image.getHeight() != text.getHeight())     {         throw new IllegalArgumentException("Dimensions are not the same!");     }     BufferedImage img = new BufferedImage(image.getWidth(),                                           image.getHeight(),                                           BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_ARGB_PRE);      for (int y = 0; y < image.getHeight(); ++y) {         for (int x = 0; x < image.getWidth(); ++x) {            int textPixel = text.getRGB(x, y);            int textAlpha = (textPixel & 0xFF000000);            int sourceRGB = image.getRGB(x, y);            int newAlpha = (int) (((textAlpha >> 24) * (sourceRGB >> 24)) / 255d);            int imgPixel = (newAlpha << 24) |  (sourceRGB & 0x00FFFFFF);            int rgb = imgPixel | textAlpha;            img.setRGB(x, y, rgb);          }     }     return img; }