Index: /Users/eredmond/Svn/maven/trunks/sandbox/doxia/doxia-book/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/doxia/book/services/renderer/AbstractITextBookRenderer.java
===================================================================
--- /Users/eredmond/Svn/maven/trunks/sandbox/doxia/doxia-book/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/doxia/book/services/renderer/AbstractITextBookRenderer.java	(revision 544906)
+++ /Users/eredmond/Svn/maven/trunks/sandbox/doxia/doxia-book/src/main/java/org/apache/maven/doxia/book/services/renderer/AbstractITextBookRenderer.java	(working copy)
@@ -24,11 +24,14 @@
 import java.io.FileReader;
 import java.io.FileWriter;
 import java.io.IOException;
+import java.net.URL;
+import java.net.URLClassLoader;
 import java.text.DateFormat;
 import java.util.ArrayList;
 import java.util.Date;
 import java.util.Iterator;
 import java.util.List;
+import java.util.StringTokenizer;
 
 import org.apache.maven.doxia.Doxia;
 import org.apache.maven.doxia.book.BookDoxiaException;
@@ -61,6 +64,12 @@
      */
     private Doxia doxia;
 
+    /**
+     * @plexus.configuration
+     *   default-value="src/site/resources"
+     */
+    protected String imageDirs;
+
     // ----------------------------------------------------------------------
     // BookRenderer Implementation
     // ----------------------------------------------------------------------
@@ -231,8 +240,10 @@
         //
         // ----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-        Sink itextSink = new ITextSink( writer );
+        ITextSink itextSink = new ITextSink( writer );
 
+        populateClassloader( itextSink );
+
         List pipeline = new ArrayList();
         //        pipeline.add( DebugSink.newInstance() );
         pipeline.add( itextSink );
@@ -260,6 +271,48 @@
         //        writer.endElement(); // section
     }
 
+    /**
+     * Adds image URLs to the ITextSink Classloader if imageDirs is set.
+     * @param itextSink
+     */
+    private void populateClassloader( ITextSink itextSink )
+    {
+        if( imageDirs != null )
+        {
+        	boolean isDebug = getLogger().isDebugEnabled();
+
+        	ArrayList dirList = new ArrayList();
+
+        	for( StringTokenizer tokenizer = new StringTokenizer( imageDirs, "," );
+        		tokenizer.hasMoreTokens();
+        		dirList.add( tokenizer.nextToken() ) );
+
+        	URL[] urls = new URL[ dirList.size() ];
+
+        	for( int i = 0; i < dirList.size(); i++ )
+	        {
+        		String dir = String.valueOf( dirList.get( i ) );
+	        	try
+	        	{
+	        		urls[i] = new File( dir ).toURL();
+
+	        		if( isDebug )
+	        		{
+	        			getLogger().debug( "Adding directory to ClassLoader " + dir );
+	        		}
+	        	}
+	        	catch( Exception e )
+	        	{
+	        		getLogger().warn( "Cannot convert file name to URL: " + dir );
+	        	}
+			}
+	        URLClassLoader urlClassLoader =
+	        	new URLClassLoader( urls, Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader() );
+
+	        itextSink.setClassLoader( urlClassLoader );
+        }
+    }
+
     private void startTitle( PrettyPrintXMLWriter writer, String leading, String font, String size, String fontstyle,
                              String red, String green, String blue )
     {