Merging Images in Java

The following function is very useful, in many circumstances I have found that combining two images can be more convenient than creating one with some kind of image software (I use Gimp).

Merging is very useful for watermarking images or as we have done, marking the status of a file...
As you can see, in the image to the right, some of the file icons have a status in the bottom right hand corner: Green is a new file; Blue is a modified file

Feel free to copy/use this code as we have released it under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3).
<br />/**<br />* Merges two images into one, imageB gets overlaid on imageA. Both images do not need<br />* to be the same size.<br />*<br />* @param observer<br />* @param imageA<br />* @param imageB<br />* @return<br />*/<br />public static BufferedImage merge(java.awt.image.ImageObserver observer, byte imageA[], byte imageB[])<br />{<br /> ImageIcon imageAA = new ImageIcon(imageA);<br /> ImageIcon imageBB = new ImageIcon(imageB);<br /><br /> int wA = imageAA.getIconWidth();<br /> int hA = imageAA.getIconHeight();<br /> int wB = imageBB.getIconWidth();<br /> int hB = imageBB.getIconHeight();<br /><br /> BufferedImage image = new BufferedImage(wA, hA, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);<br /><br /> Graphics g = image.createGraphics();<br /><br /> g.drawImage(imageAA.getImage(), 0, 0, wA, hA, observer);<br /> g.drawImage(imageBB.getImage(), 0, 0, wB, hB, observer);<br /> return image;<br /><br />}<br /><br />