I am looking for a simple way to place multiple tool buttons, laid out at arbitrary locations, on top of a label showing my pixmap. I plan to make the icons for the tool buttons semi-transparent, and set them to auto-raise, so that hovering over portions of the label will effectively highlight portions of its pixmap for the user to act on. Essentially, I want the user to be able to select a portion of a fixed picture by clicking a tool button. Once selected, I'll change either the underlying pixmap label or the tool button icon state to show the selection.

My basic question is how to set up the button layout over a pixmap. I'd like to use Designer if possible, since I may have to lay out tool buttons on multiple images. I looked at setting a background image for a QGroupBox, but didn't see that option. I looked at QStackedLayout and QStackedWidget, but that seems to show pages mutually exclusively.

This could reduce to a simple question: how to use Designer to lay out tool buttons on a label. (If so, perhaps I'm posting in the wrong forum.)

Suggestions on tools and classes or alternative approaches would be great.

thanks