Ruby – RMagick remove white background from image and make it transparent

To fix the OutOfMemory error, you should do something like this:

BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
options.inSampleSize = 8;
Bitmap preview_bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is, null, options);

This inSampleSize option reduces memory consumption.

Here's a complete method. First it reads image size without decoding the content itself. Then it finds the best inSampleSize value, it should be a power of 2, and finally the image is decoded.

// Decodes image and scales it to reduce memory consumption
private Bitmap decodeFile(File f) {
    try {
        // Decode image size
        BitmapFactory.Options o = new BitmapFactory.Options();
        o.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
        BitmapFactory.decodeStream(new FileInputStream(f), null, o);

        // The new size we want to scale to
        final int REQUIRED_SIZE=70;

        // Find the correct scale value. It should be the power of 2.
        int scale = 1;
        while(o.outWidth / scale / 2 >= REQUIRED_SIZE && 
              o.outHeight / scale / 2 >= REQUIRED_SIZE) {
            scale *= 2;
        }

        // Decode with inSampleSize
        BitmapFactory.Options o2 = new BitmapFactory.Options();
        o2.inSampleSize = scale;
        return BitmapFactory.decodeStream(new FileInputStream(f), null, o2);
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {}
    return null;
}

-background white -alpha remove -alpha off

Example:

convert image.png -background white -alpha remove -alpha off white.png

Feel free to replace white with any other color you want. Imagemagick documentation says this about the -alpha remove operation:

This operation is simple and fast, and does the job without needing any extra memory use, or other side effects that may be associated with alternative transparency removal techniques. It is thus the preferred way of removing image transparency.