Develop Reference

Punch a Transparent hole in my semi Black Canvas

I am trying to create a Black screen with a transparent Hole in the middle of the screen. Here is what i have tried.
#Override
public void draw(Canvas canvas)
{
Paint myPaint = new Paint();
myPaint.setColor(0xC0000000);
canvas.drawRect(mBlackRect, myPaint);
myPaint = new Paint();
myPaint.setColor(Color.TRANSPARENT);
myPaint.setXfermode(new PorterDuffXfermode(PorterDuff.Mode.CLEAR));
canvas.drawRect(mTransparentRect, myPaint);
}
The second paint, shows black color instead of transparent. How can i punch a transparent hole in MY SemiBlack Canvas?

you didn't save the canvas, try the code below
Paint myPaint = new Paint();
int sc = canvas.saveLayer(mBlackRect.left, mBlackRect.top,
mBlackRect.right, mBlackRect.bottom, myPaint,
Canvas.ALL_SAVE_FLAG);
myPaint.setColor(0xC0000000);
canvas.drawRect(mBlackRect, myPaint);
myPaint.setColor(Color.TRANSPARENT);
myPaint.setXfermode(new PorterDuffXfermode(PorterDuff.Mode.CLEAR));
canvas.drawRect(mTransparentRect, myPaint);
myPaint.setXfermode(null);
canvas.restoreToCount(sc);

You can not really "punch" a hole by "removing pixels" from something already drawn, at least not with a hardware layer. And if you use a software layer, it will be bad for performance.
What you want to do is draw your shape with an alpha mask applied to your paint. A mask will prevent some parts of the shape to be drawn on the canvas, like cutting a piece of paper and stick it on a wall before spreading the painting.
To apply an alpha mask to your paint, you first need to create a bitmap containing the "hole" shape (programmatically or by loading a custom image from resources), then create a BitmapShader from this bitmap with the proper Xfermode (depending if you want the transparent part in your mask bitmap to be cut out or the non-transparent part) and finally apply this shader to your paint before drawing the semitransparent rectangle or anything you want.
Be careful with performance: only create the Paint object once (do not allocate any object in onDraw() because this method gets called up to 60 times per second on the UI thread), and recreate the alpha mask bitmap only when the bounds of your View/Drawable change (if its dimensions depend on the View dimensions of course, otherwise you just create it once).
I'm sorry if I don't have time to give you ready-to-use code but I think you should find plenty of information about the technique I just described and you can start experimenting and figuring out the solution by yourself which is more rewarding I think ;)

How to create a circle clippath from an image?

Imagine that I have a rectangle image. How could I create a style like the next one?
I mean, cropping the image into a circle, add the border, the shadow and the gross /shine effect. Until now, I only have tried this snippet code to crop the image: Cropping circular area from bitmap in Android but just that. I have no idea how to do the remaining components in Android.

An easy way to achieve this effect is to use Canvas.drawCircle() and a BitmapShader:
BitmapShader s = new BitmapShader(myPhoto, Shader.TileMode.CLAMP, Shader.TileMode.CLAMP);
Paint p = new Paint();
p.setShader(s);
myCanvas.drawCircle(centerX, centerY, radius, p);
To do the shadow, simply call Paint.setShadowLayer() on the paint (this will only work if you draw the effect into an offscreen Bitmap or if your View uses a software layer – set by calling View.setLayerType() –).
The border can be drawn by drawing another circle on top, using the Paint.Style.STROKE style (that you can set by calling Paint.setStyle()).
Finally you can draw the gloss by drawing a circle, oval or Path on top of your very first circle. You'll need to use a LinearGradient shader on your paint and you'll also need to clip the gloss. You can do this in two ways:
If you are drawing the entire effect into a Bitmap, which is what I would recommend, simply set the paint's Xfermode to a new PorterDuffXfermode(PorterDuff.Mode.SRC_IN).
If you are drawing the effect directly on screen you can simply use Canvas.clipPath() to set a circular clip. Note that this will work with hardware acceleration only as of Android 4.3.

How to draw alpha on an image / setting pixels invisible - on fingertouch

I want to create a little scratch game. The problem is, that I can't figure out how to erase pixels from an image in android (like the eraser in gimp / photoshop).
The image is an .png with alpha channel.

AIUI, drawing operations on a canvas blend a transparent pixel with the prior value of the pixel. This is by default, and you can see it by setting a canvas to black and drawing a fully transparent shape onto it, and then drawing the underlying bitmap over an image of another canvas (result: a fully black canvas), or by setting a canvas to a partially transparent color and, drawing a shape of another partially transparent color, and then drawing this over an image (result: the original image is tinted by the first color, outside the shape; within the shape, it's tinted by both transparent colors). I don't know the blending method used by default, and looking through the docs just makes me wish I knew what book to buy so I can understand how to use what's available.
So I would set pixels to transparent by setting them 'directly', with Bitmap methods, rather than with canvas operations. Although if you need to punch a transparent shape into an overlay, you can draw the shape with a solid non-transparent color, and then manipulate the bitmap directly, mapping this color to the transparent color.
Bitmap docs. Prefer getPixels() and setPixels() to a method-call per pixel.
EDIT: ...er, did I misunderstand? You want to 'erase' pixels as in a paint program? Then just draw whatever the background color is. There's no erasure involved.

draw path with translucent (semi-transparent) band

How can i draw path with translucent (semi-transparent) band on canvas (method onDraw in my custom View)? I draw path line by bezier curve (method path.quadTo), but i want to around the line was illuminated translucent band?
I tried several approaches:
Try draw path by paint with semi-transparent color 0x8800ff00.
Try use paint.setShader(new BitmapShader(semi-transparent background image)) and draw path by this paint;
But they did not help. There was no effect of translucency.

Does it work if you first draw the curve using a Paint with a much bigger StrokeWidth and a transparent color (this being the glow), then draw your first curve on top of it?

Android - Draw bitmap as one color

I have several bitmaps (game sprites) which I'd like to draw into another bitmap, however each non-transparent pixel of the source bitmap should be drawn using a single color, ignoring the original pixel color of the source. Basically, I'm trying to use the sprite as a "stamp" of a single color to be drawn into the destination bitmap.
I believe I should be using canvas.drawBitmap (Bitmap bitmap, Matrix matrix, Paint paint), however I'm not exactly sure how I should initialize the paint object. Is this approach correct?

You don't need to perform as many steps as Romain Guy suggests, just initialize your paint with the desired color, and use Paint.setColorFilter() with PorterDuff.Mode.SRC_ATOP
myPaint.setColorFilter(new PorterDuffColorFilter(myColor, PorterDuff.Mode.SRC_ATOP));

If your destination bitmap is transparent, draw all your sprites inside that bitmap normally (you can use a null Paint.) Then, draw a filled rectangle that covers the entire bitmap, using the Porter-Duff xfermode called SrcIn (Source In.)