Loading Image External To Jar File

My directory structure looks like this:

/data/images

/lib/

I have a jar file in the lib folder that needs to access an image stored in the /data/images folder. I try using the following code:

BufferedImage img;

File newFile = new File(waypoint.geticonPath());

img = ImageIO.read(newFile);

However, I get the following error:

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-1" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: input == null!

at javax.imageio.ImageIO.read(Unknown Source)

Any suggestions? The images need to remain external to the jar file.

[596 byte] By [EdLaFavea] at [2007-11-27 5:00:34]