Using the same image several times: does it eat up more RAM?

[NuxlyStardust]

Hello there :)
I have a question about how images loaded with java.awt.Image are managed internally.

Here's what I'm doing:
I'm writing a Swing component that will be used several times at once because it will appear inside a child window in a MDI setup. And this component loads a PNG image from the disk to draw it as a background.
And I'm not sure how to go with that...
Because if I load that image from the constructor and keep the reference it might load one image in the memory for each window and thus eat up a lot of RAM. Unless Java takes care of making sure that images are loaded only once, but I'm not sure it does so I hoped you could tell me.

The other way I'm considering is to have a ResourceManager singleton class that takes care of loading all the images that my program will need, and store them in a HashMap so they can be picked up anywhere in the code using a string identifier.

What would be the best design?

Thanks :)

[NuxlyStardust]

Any idea? :s

[KevinWorkman]

Have you done any profiling at all? Your first question is best answered by writing a program and testing it yourself- feel free to post it in SSCCE form. Let us know when you do that, and we'll go from there.

[DarrylBurke]

What do you mean by

images loaded with java.awt.Image

since that doesn't make any sense to me.

Unless Java takes care of making sure that images are loaded only once

A static variable is created once and once only, when the class is loaded.

db

[NuxlyStardust]

What do you mean by

since that doesn't make any sense to me.

I mean ImageIcon, and I keep it in an Image object.
So using a static variable would be the "standard way" to do this?
Cause if I need it in another class it will exist twice in the memory...