Convert BufferedImage to Byte Array in Java

In this article, we will see how to convert BufferedImage to Byte Array in Java.

💡 Outline

To convert BufferedImage to byte array, you can use below code:

    BufferedImage bufferedImage = ImageIO.read(new File("c:\\sample.png"));
    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    ImageIO.write(bufferedImage, "png", baos);
    byte[] byteArr = baos.toByteArray();

Java BufferedImage to Byte Array

Here are steps to convert BufferedImage to Byte Array in java:

• Create instance of ByteArrayOutputStream baos.
• Call ImageIo.write() with bufferedImage, formatName such as png,jpg etc. and baos as parameters
• Get byte array from ByteArrayOutputStream baos by calling toByteArray() method.

Here is complete program:

package org.arpit.java2blog;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.Paths;

public class BufferedImageToByteArray {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        Path source = Paths.get("MyFile.png");
        BufferedImage bufferedImage = ImageIO.read(source.toFile());
        byte[] byteArr  =  convertBufferImageToByteArray(bufferedImage);
        System.out.println(byteArr);
    }

    // Convert BufferedImage to Byte array
    public static byte[] convertBufferImageToByteArray(BufferedImage bufferedImage) throws IOException {
        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        ImageIO.write(bufferedImage, "png", baos);
        byte[] byteArr = baos.toByteArray();
        return byteArr;
    }
}

Convert BufferedImage to byte[] without writing to disk

In case you have large amount of BufferedImages and do not want to write to disk, you can use following code as per this stackoverflow thread.
{!{pre code="java" title="BufferedImage to byte[] without writing to disk"}!}czo5MzpcIg0KYnl0ZVtdIGltYWdlQnl0ZXMgPSAoKERhdGFCdWZmZXJCeXRlKSBidWZmZXJlZEltYWdlLmdldERhdGEoKS5nZXREYXR7WyYqJl19YUJ1ZmZlcigpKS5nZXREYXRhKCk7DQpcIjt7WyYqJl19{!{/pre}!}

Above code will create copy of image. If you are looking for direct reference you can use bufferedImage.getRaster().getDataBuffer().

That’s all about how to Convert BufferedImage to Byte Array in Java.