Whats the best way to manage/display images ?

Question

I'm building a yet another photo management application that is designed to be a Picasa2 "lite". I've got a lot of JPGs I need to manage, all of which are loaded asynchronously and cached over the web.
The same image may appear in multiple places, (i.e. thumbnail, fullsize, original with a zoom box, etc.) I'm having problems keeping all these images in synch when I change the underlying image -- right now I have to create all new JLabels for everything and add them to their respective Panels again. But that doesn't seem like its the best way.
Here's my JLabel sub-class:
public class ImageLocatorSubscriber extends JLabel {
     public final ImageDimEnum maxDimEnum;
     final ImageIcon imgIcon = new ImageIcon();
     BufferedImage bi;
     ImageLocator il;
     public ImageLocatorSubscriber(ImageLocator il, ImageDimEnum d) {
          super();
          this.maxDimEnum = d;
          this.imgIcon = new ImageIcon();
          if (il != null) {
               this.il = il;
                        this.bi = il.getBi(RunMode.NOWAIT);
                  if (bi.getWidth()!=maxDimEnum.dim.getWidth() || bi.getHeight()!=maxDimEnum.dim.getHeight()) {
                       bi = FotoFix.resize(bi, maxDimEnum.dim);
                  this.bi = bi;
                  this.imgIcon.setImage(this.bi);
                  this.setSize(bi.getWidth(), bi.getHeight());
          this.setIcon(this.imgIcon);
          this.setBorder(Constants.borderGray);
     }Is the preferred method for changing the image displayed in a JLabel
a) create a new ImageIcon and use (JLabel) this.setIcon()
b) reuse the existing ImageIcon and use (JLabel) this.imgIcon.setImage();
c) remove the old JLabel from the panel, create a new JLabel, and add that to the panel?
I can only get c) to work. When I try to use b) some of the images are not updated properly, even as I have declared this.imgIcon as final. Any ideas, or should I just leave it be?

Answer 1

override this method in any JComponent subclass
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/swing/JComponent.html#paintComponent(java.awt.Graphics)