frothing : Java Glossary

One classic frothing example is:

// Get color of one point.
// A side effect is internally creating an object for the pixel,
// which when you do that repeatedly, causes frothing.
 int rgb = bufferedImage.getRGB( x, y );

// Get color of one point.
// Though this code looks more convoluted, it recycles the pixel
// object, thus avoiding frothing.
private Object pixelData = null;
// ...
// Provide a suitable container e.g. byte[] for the result from the last time,
// null on first call.
pixelData = bufferedImage.getRaster().getDataElements( x, y, pixelData );
int rgb = bufferedImage.getColorModel().getRGB( pixelData );