Combining Image memory spaces

[Mark McKay]

I'm developing an application that draws on several disk based images to
create a composite image. I've noticed that my rendering time goes up
as I load more images into memory. However, this seems to be due to the
number of distinct images rather than the number of bytes they take up,
since when I combine them into a single image in photoshop my rendering
time goes down again.

Since an image is essentially a 1D array of bytes in memory, I was
wondering if perhaps there were some way to combine my images at runtime
into a single 'super image' or image group where everything was stored
in a contigious block of memory and received the benefits of being
treated like a VolitileImage and fast blitting. I can't do this in
photoshop, since different scenerios will require different image
resources to be loaded in the background.

Another technique would be to composite all my images into a giant 2D
source Image, but I would like to avoid this since it would waste space
(gaps between images) and creating the best fit sorting algorithm for
this is a PhD level research project.

Alternately, is there a way to stop Java from penalizing me from having
multiple static Images in use?

Mark McKay

[Phil...]

Re: Combining Image memory spaces

Not to be a wise ass, but java prides itself in information
hiding and having the ability to change the representation
of its objects without the customer knowing or having to
know or getting to know. So it appears that you are SOL
from my limited experience point of view.
Phil...

"Mark McKay" <mark@kitfox.co m> wrote in message
news:Xuj9b.340$ z21.25024544@ma ntis.golden.net ...[color=blue]
>
> I'm developing an application that draws on several disk based images to
> create a composite image. I've noticed that my rendering time goes up
> as I load more images into memory. However, this seems to be due to the
> number of distinct images rather than the number of bytes they take up,
> since when I combine them into a single image in photoshop my rendering
> time goes down again.
>
> Since an image is essentially a 1D array of bytes in memory, I was
> wondering if perhaps there were some way to combine my images at runtime
> into a single 'super image' or image group where everything was stored
> in a contigious block of memory and received the benefits of being
> treated like a VolitileImage and fast blitting. I can't do this in
> photoshop, since different scenerios will require different image
> resources to be loaded in the background.
>
> Another technique would be to composite all my images into a giant 2D
> source Image, but I would like to avoid this since it would waste space
> (gaps between images) and creating the best fit sorting algorithm for
> this is a PhD level research project.
>
> Alternately, is there a way to stop Java from penalizing me from having
> multiple static Images in use?
>
> Mark McKay
>[/color]