Question

What’s the simplest way to desaturate a BufferedImage?

Answer 1

Use ColorConvertOp:

public static BufferedImage desaturate(BufferedImage source) {
    ColorConvertOp colorConvert = 
        new ColorConvertOp(ColorSpace.getInstance(ColorSpace.CS_GRAY), null);
    colorConvert.filter(source, source);

    return source;
}

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Update :
There is indeed a simpler way. You can use the GrayFilter class. What’s nice about this class is that it provides a static utility method (i.e. createDisabledImage(Image i)) that will return a grayed-out version of the image i.

That being said, I think the simplest way to desaturate a BufferedImage instance is the following:

BufferedImage desaturatedImage = GrayFilter.createDisabledImage(originalImage);