Creating an Icon with a Tranparent Background

I'm using ImageIcons that I downloaded from a free icon site in my JButtons. Two of them have white backgrounds, and the other one has a black background. I would prefer not to have a background color clash, so I want to make all the backgrounds transparent. I've seen ways to make image backgrounds transparent, but 开发者_如何学编程I thought it was kinda roundabout to turn my ImageIcons into Images and back again. Is there a way to make the backgrounds of ImageIcons transparent without converting to Images?

This isn't a Java-solution, but it's a solution I use frequently nonetheless. Download/install Paint.NET and follow this discussion on how to make the background of images transparent. And then use the resulting image for the ImageIcon.

Another non java solution: with photoshop you can select a small white rectangle of the background part, and then menu "Select" > "Similar" if you want to delete all white pixels, or "Grow" if you want to delete all white pixels touching your existing selection.