Is there a way to blend pixels directly to Raster in a BufferedImage with custom blending using own pixel loops instead of cloning the source pixels with getDataElements? I tried inheriting from Composite and CompositeContext but the permanent memory leak causes crashes when the memory runs out. I need custom blending for light effects so AlphaComposite is not enough for my project. In the worst case, I just make my own image type using arrays as I usually do in C.

It seems like Java is leaking because it creates an intermediate image for interpolation so when I first draw to an image that I recycle myself using AlphaComposite.Src and drawRenderedImage, I can then use my custom composite in a 1:1 scale ratio without leaking memory. The wasted time is acceptable because the operation is only performed when the level is loaded.