Unable to locate image

Question

Ive been following along with a tutorial to make a 2d game. Ive gotten as far as creating the Window and coloring it, setting keyboard inputs, but now im trying to import an image. In the commens of this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7pfq0W3e4I , it seems like everyone else is having the same problem. Line of code in main class:

private SpriteSheet spriteSheet = new SpriteSheet("/spritesheet.png");

code for SpriteSheet class:

package GFX;

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.IOException;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

 public class SpriteSheet {

public String path;
public int width;
public int height;

public int[] pixels;

public SpriteSheet(String path){
    BufferedImage image = null;

    try {
        image = ImageIO.read(SpriteSheet.class.getResourceAsStream(path));
    } catch (Exception e) {
        System.out.println("Cant find image");
    }

    if(image == null){ 
        return;
    }

    this.path = path;
    this.width = image.getWidth();
    this.height = image.getHeight();

    pixels = image.getRGB(0,0,width,height,null,0,width);   //0xffABCdAs

    for(int i = 0;i<pixels.length;i++){
        pixels[i] = (pixels[i] & 0xff)/64;
    }

    for(int i = 0;i<16;i++){
        System.out.println(pixels[i]);
    }



}

}

I have ried all differnt directories, even the one starting from the harddrvie, but still nothing, its just returning "Cant find image", as indicated in the try-catch. The tutorials had it like

            try {   image =    ImageIO.read(SpriteSheet.class.getResourceAsStream(path));
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

this did not work and returned this error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: input == null!
at javax.imageio.ImageIO.read(ImageIO.java:1348)
at GFX.SpriteSheet.<init>(SpriteSheet.java:20)
at inputHandling.Game.<init>(Game.java:23)
at inputHandling.Game.main(Game.java:128)

Many people in the comments also posted this error, and when i comment out the path in the main class, the program runs but without finding the image. Thanks.

Answer 1

One simple fix would be the following:

Change

private SpriteSheet spriteSheet = new SpriteSheet("/spritesheet.png");

to

private SpriteSheet spriteSheet = new SpriteSheet("spritesheet.png");

and then place spritesheet.png in the same Java package or folder as the class SpriteSheet.

Class.getResourceAsStream() looks for resources on your classpath, which is why as long as the image is on the classpath, it will work.