How to read BMP images in Java (Tutorial)

Why do BMP Images cause issues for Java Developers?

ImageIO does support BMP file types by default but it is not a complete implementation. If you have an existing Java Application using ImageIO you will find it cannot process all BMP images.

In this post, I will cover how to upgrade ImageIO to support BMP files so existing Java Applications which use ImageIO will work with more BMP files (often without having to make any code changes) and how to read BMP files in JDeli directly.

What options are there for reading BMP files in Java?

Java can read basic BMP images, but support is limited. For full compatibility commercial libraries like JDeli offer extended BMP support, better performance, and no need for external dependencies.

If you are looking for a free solution, there is BMP support in Apache Imaging. In this article we will be using our JDeli pure Java library to read BMP files.

How to upgrade ImageIO to read BMP files

It’s actually very simple and can be done without rewriting your existing code!

For example, the code below does not work with ImageIO for all BMP images

// Read BMP image into Java with ImageIO

BufferedImage bufferedImage = ImageIO.read(new File("ImageFile.bmp"));

• Download the JDeli trial jar with our ImageIO plugin
• Follow the support documentation to install

How to read a BMP image in Java with JDeli

1. Add JDeli to your class or module path. (download the trial jar).
2. Create a File, InputStream pointing to the raw BMP image. You can also use a byte[] containing the image data.
3. Read the BMP image into a BufferedImage

and the Java code to Read BMP with JDeli…

File file = new File("/path/to/image.bmp");

BufferedImage file = JDeli.read(bmpFile);

Other useful BMP links

• Related articles on our support site.
• How to write BMP files in Java.
• How to convert BMP files to JPG in bulk (Tutorial)

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(avifImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(dicomImageFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(heicImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "heic", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpegImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpeg", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(jpeg2000ImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "jpx", outputStreamOrFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "pdf", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(pngImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "png", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(tiffImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "tiff", outputStreamOrFile);

// Read an image
BufferedImage bufferedImage = JDeli.read(webpImageFile);

// Write an image
JDeli.write(bufferedImage, "webp", outputStreamOrFile);