Picture viewer

First we need to read and show at least on image. Make an application that takes the name of an image file as a command line argument and shows that images within a JFrame. Do not think about the size of the JFrame yet. Set the size manually in your code so that the frame is big enough to display the image. Note that java.awt.Toolkit supports the GIF, JPEG and PNG image formats.

Hint: java.awt.Toolkit.createImage and java.awt.Graphics.drawImage

ImageViewer.java

Now we will try to scale the image. In a slide show double size or a "fill the screen" size would be interesting. Extend the application above to scale your image to fit the JFrame to take up as much space as possible within the frame, while preserving the aspect ratio.

Hint: For scaling there are different options, you could use another drawImage method of Graphics to scale on the fly, or you could pre-scale the image using an image filter of the java.awt.image package and the java.awt.image.FilteredImageSource class.

ImageViewer.java

Next, we go on to implement the actual slide show. For this we need a list of images to display. At first we will search the current directory for image files and then show one at a time. The easiest will probably be to make an automated slide show which loops through the images with a pre-set delay in between.

My solution requires a file filter called com.rememberjava.io.SunFileFilter. Make the package directory and download the file SunFileFilter.java by clicking the package icon to the left.

SlideShow.java

com.rememberjava.io.SunFileFilter.java

Now we will investigate the possibilities of full-screen views. The class java.awt.GraphicsDevice contains some methods for this purpose. Extend your slide show application from above to view the images in full-screen mode, scaled or original size.

My solution requires a file filter called com.rememberjava.io.SunFileFilter. Make the package directory and download the file SunFileFilter.java by clicking the package icon to the left.

SlideShow.java

com.rememberjava.io.SunFileFilter.java

Finally, this week, finish the slide show application and add your favorite features. This could include using keyboard and/or mouse keys to navigate the image queue, a randomised slide show, pre-buffering of images in the slide show, retrieving images information (size, bit-depth, file name, etc.) or doing file operations like deleting and moving images.

This project has evolved into a full-fledged image viewer with tagging capabilities. For more, please visit the Java Image Viewer page.