icon/image/bitmap alpha control?

[- HAL9000]

Reference the visual basic power pack:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en...bpowerpack.asp

I have been using win32 SHGetFileInfoW to get icons for my
"FileViewer" & "FolderViewer" as is done in the power pack code. What
is unusual is that the icons are much darker than normal. You can see
this in the folder icons of figure 7 on the web page - sort of a black
lining.

1) How do you get icons that look like those that windows shows?
Should I be using a different win32 function? Is there some "alpha"
contrast level control somewhere?

2) Also when selecting, and say copying, a file the icon contrast
changes in WIndows Explorer - it washes out. How would one go about
doing that? A method in ListView? A method in ImageList? Manually
change the alpha value of each pixel?
Thanks for you time...