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Create a new BufferedImage of equal size, get its Graphics and draw the first BufferedImage using Graphics.drawImage (you might want to look into calling dispose() on the Graphics object returned by...

Try to load images using the ImageIO utility class as opposed to loading the image through the ImageIcon (which not only creates an unused object, but uses Toolkit.createImage method that according...

For your latter question, see
Controlling Access to Members of a Class (The Java™ Tutorials > Learning the Java Language > Classes and Objects)
Protected has its role in certain scenarios, and is...