Java 2D and resize

Question

I have some old Java 2D code I want to reuse, but was wondering, is this the best way to get the highest quality images?

    public static BufferedImage getScaled(BufferedImage imgSrc, Dimension dim) {

    //  This code ensures that all the pixels in the image are loaded.
    Image scaled = imgSrc.getScaledInstance(
            dim.width, dim.height, Image.SCALE_SMOOTH);

    // This code ensures that all the pixels in the image are loaded.
    Image temp = new ImageIcon(scaled).getImage();

    // Create the buffered image.
    BufferedImage bufferedImage = new BufferedImage(temp.getWidth(null), 
            temp.getHeight(null), BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);

    // Copy image to buffered image.
    Graphics g = bufferedImage.createGraphics();
    // Clear background and paint the image.
    g.setColor(Color.white);
    g.fillRect(0, 0, temp.getWidth(null),temp.getHeight(null));
    g.drawImage(temp, 0, 0, null);
    g.dispose();


    // j2d's image scaling quality is rather poor, especially when
    // scaling down an image to a much smaller size. We'll post filter  
    // our images using a trick found at 
    // http://blogs.cocoondev.org/mpo/archives/003584.html
    // to increase the perceived quality....
    float origArea = imgSrc.getWidth() * imgSrc.getHeight();
    float newArea = dim.width * dim.height;
    if (newArea <= (origArea / 2.)) {
        bufferedImage = blurImg(bufferedImage);
    }

    return bufferedImage;
}

public static BufferedImage blurImg(BufferedImage src) {
    // soften factor - increase to increase blur strength
    float softenFactor = 0.010f;
    // convolution kernel (blur)
    float[] softenArray = {
            0,              softenFactor,       0, 
            softenFactor, 1-(softenFactor*4), softenFactor, 
            0,              softenFactor,       0};

    Kernel kernel = new Kernel(3, 3, softenArray);
    ConvolveOp cOp = new ConvolveOp(kernel, ConvolveOp.EDGE_NO_OP, null);
    return cOp.filter(src, null);
}

Answer 1

Chris Campbell has an excellent and detailed write-up on scaling images - see this article.

Chet Haase and Romain Guy also have a detailed and very informative write-up of image scaling in their book, Filthy Rich Clients.