Bad Image Scaling Quality

Scaling an image (especially downscaling to less than half the size of the original image) produces quite bad results with very visible edges.

This is a known problem of the normal Java2D scaled image drawing operations, described in this article: http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2007/04/03/perils-of-image-getscaledinstance.html

The article also provides a simple workaround that would greatly improve the image quality of down-scaled images with just a small increase in processing time. (if you use the example code from the article, plaase note that there's a bug with regard to upscaling images leading to an infinite loop, but that should be easy to fix).

In my particular use case I'd like to produce a team list using the avatars stored with each account. And due to this bug the avatars of those who upload high-resolution pictures look worst in that list.