Embed Graphics2D into itext without absolute positioning

Question

I'm creating PDFs with iText (LGPL) which include some Text and self-drawn (Graphics2D) images.

My current solution is to draw the images on a BufferedImage and then include it in the PDF, which has several drawbacks:
If printed, the images just look ugly, a way to circumvent this is to use larger images, and with 3000*3000 it looks ok. But this leads to the next problem: time. It takes several seconds to compress one image (I haven’t found a way to disable it, and files would be huge without compression).

PdfGraphics2d from iText looks good, but has one major drawback: it’s only able to draw to the background of the PDF, and there seems to be no way to wrap it in some kind of element.

Is there a way to draw on a PDF without having to use absolute positions? I’m using Graphics2d because it’s used also to provide a preview in the UI.

Answer 1

You can wrap a PdfTemplate inside an Image object without losing any of the vector image's quality. In most cases, you'll use the Image object to add raster images to a PDF document as an Image XObject. However, in this case, the PdfTemplate will be added as a Form XObject using its original vector data. Another situation when this happens, is when you add a WMF file; such as file is converted into PDF syntax automatically.