Image Scaling problems, with transparency *SOLVED*

[Andy_Hollywood]

Hello

I need to scale gif images, and wrote a scaling function that would take and image and two new dimensions and scale the image accordingly, say i do this on a gif image 16 * 16, this image is a circle, with transparent areas at the edges so it appears as a cirlce, this is fine, untill run it thru my imageFittedToSize methid, which scales it, but changes the transparent background to appear as black: i attach an example, the left image is the result, the right is the original which is transparent where seen as white.

Here is the function i am using:

    /**
     * This will create a scaled image, Note, we only reduce an image, 
     * NOT grow and image.
     * @param image - Image to be Scaled Down
     * @param width - the desire Width
     * @param height -  the desired Height.
     * @return - the new Buffered Image.
     */
    public static BufferedImage imageFittedToSize(Image image, int width, int height){
        /**
         * Get the Original Height and Width
         */
        int origHeight  = image.getHeight(null);
        int origWidth = image.getWidth(null);
        
        /**
         * Work out how much we'd have to scale by to get the new dimensions.
         */
        double heightScale = (double)height/(double)origHeight;
        double widthScale = (double)width / (double)origWidth;
        
        /**
         * Decide which side need to be scaled more
         * (so we keep the right ratio on height and width
         */
        double scale = (widthScale < heightScale ? widthScale:heightScale);
        
        /**
         * Calculate the New Output Height and Width given the Scale Options.
         */
        int outputWidth, outputHeight;
        if(scale < 1.0d){
            outputWidth = (int)(scale*origWidth);
            outputHeight = (int)(scale*origHeight);
        }else{
            outputWidth = origWidth;
            outputHeight = origHeight;
        }
        
        /**
         * Create a new Buffered Image
         */
        BufferedImage outImage = new BufferedImage(outputWidth, outputHeight, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
        
        /**
         * Set the Scale
         */
        AffineTransform tx = new AffineTransform();
        /**
         * If the Image is smaller than the desired image Size
         * lets not bother scaling.
         */
        if(scale < 1.0d){
            tx.scale(scale, scale);
        }
        
        /**
         * Paint the Image.
         */
        Graphics2D g2d = outImage.createGraphics();
        g2d.drawImage(image, tx, null);
        g2d.dispose();
        
        /**
         * Return the Scaled Image.
         */
        return outImage;
    }

I just can't seem to get rid of the black parts, i'm thinking its something trivial! at least lets hope so...

be grand if anyone had any ideas, suggestions


Andy