Image-resizing methods
Edit: about the new method, I'd say Graphics2D is a bit overkill (look at Konrad Rudolph's comment for another opinion). And you don't use the max parameter anymore. Does it stretch the image?

The original method is better, but you should have a real if else: resizing the image twice is a hack. It would look like this: you just have to fill in the if.

public static ImageIcon resizeImage(ImageIcon imageIcon, int width, int height, boolean max) {
  Image image = imageIcon.getImage();
  Image newimg;
  if(/* think what condition would work here */) {
    newimg = image.getScaledInstance(-1, height, java.awt.Image.SCALE_SMOOTH);
  } else {
    newimg = image.getScaledInstance(width, -1, java.awt.Image.SCALE_SMOOTH);
  }
  return new ImageIcon(newimg);
}


I think the helper methods are useless since there is no abstraction: it just does two separate things. This does not help that much, and it's better if opening the file is explicit: the code is easier to read.