So far I have some references to buffers in Java:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/nio/package-summary.html

...and the possibility to write pixels to bitmaps as backbuffers for double buffering-type operations.

What I am actually trying to do is manage transformations independently on several displayed images...

Since scale and translate are commutative I am trying to apply a transformation, write the image to a buffer reset the matrix and then repeat to get a new bitmap containing all of my independently transformed images.

To do this quickly I need to implement some kind of blitting as opposed to simply iteratively copying the pixeldata.

Perhaps I'm going about this in a stupid way ?

It's still a bit vague.. there's pushMatrix() and popMatrix() to do the resetting of the matrix, meaning you can just do:

Code:

pushMatrix();
translate(...);
rotate(...);
image(image1,x,y);
popMatrix();
pushMatrix();
translate(..some other..);
rotate(..an angle..);
image(image2,x,y);
popMatrix();
//etc etc 

that'll let you treat each image individually, and end up with them all on screen individually translated/rotated.