I have a treetable and have to display some status indicators for
objects in the treetable. The chosen way of doing this (not entirely
my choice) is to overlay the tree icons with small images representing
these states. Increasing the gap between icon and text and drawing in
that space *isn't* an option.

So, I have my images as giffs or png (don't mind) they are relatively
small ~7x7 pixcels with transparent backgrounds. I can draw them Ok.
The problem is that they don't stand out from the tree icon as well as
I'd like. I could surround the image with a border of some other
colour, but this makes it bigger and obscures what's underneath.

Is there som java2d/giff/png magic that would let the transparent
areas be drawn semi opaque to make it look as if the image is actually
above the icon.

This is something of a new area for me, so apologies if the answer to
this is blindingly obvious.

Regards

Steve