My java application is given a list of image files.  For each image, it
creates an image thumbnail and displays this thumbnail in a separate
JFrame.  The creation of these thumbnails is very slow compared to the
Mac Preview application.  Is there a way to speed this up?

Each thumbnail is displayed in a separate JFrame to allow the thumbnails
to be dragged and repositioned on the screen independently.  Each
thumbnail is converted to an ImageIcon and displayed in a JButton.  
Clicking on the button will rotate the image 90 degrees.

Here is the method which creates the JFrame.  I'd appreciate any
suggestions how I can improve performance speed.

private final static int
   FRAME_WIDTH  = 0,
   FRAME_HEIGHT = 20,
   THUMB_WIDTH  = 150,
   THUMB_HEIGHT = 225;

           
private JFrame createFrame(File file)
{
   Image image =
Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().createImage(file.getPath());

   Image thumb = image.getScaledInstance(THUMB_WIDTH, THUMB_HEIGHT,
Image.SCALE_SMOOTH);
           
   JButton button = new JButton(new ImageIcon(thumb));
   button.addActionListener(myButtonListener);
           
   JFrame frame = new JFrame();
   frame.setTitle(file.getName());
   frame.setSize(FRAME_WIDTH + THUMB_WIDTH, FRAME_HEIGHT +
THUMB_HEIGHT);
   frame.setLayout(new BorderLayout());
   frame.add(button, BorderLayout.CENTER);
               
   return frame;
}