"because it's the interface that we are stuck with & have to work with" is blatantly wrong. You can use anything you want to manipulate images; don't feel bound to using the standard Java Image class. To my knowledge, there's no standard python image class, so there's not even a comparison here.
As to your other points, I'm not sure why you assume copying code leads to that code being bloated or unclean. Bad assumption. Personal preference on the latter point, though it's pretty easy to find open sourced libraries.
"... I'm not sure why you assume copying code leads to that code being bloated or unclean ..."
DEFECTS if you cut+paste code from place to place and find a single defect in the block you have to go and find all the other instances you have pasted the code.
BLOAT If you cut+paste code it increases the number of lines of code within the codebase so the LOC increases.
Software development within a startup context is about creating code that is "reliable, smaller, cleaner & faster". Reusing code is good but not at the expense of modularity, bloat and defects. Not using cut & paste as a development practice isn't personal preference, its DEV 101 ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_and_paste_programming
As to your other points, I'm not sure why you assume copying code leads to that code being bloated or unclean. Bad assumption. Personal preference on the latter point, though it's pretty easy to find open sourced libraries.