Anyway, one way to indicate a "used" state is to use the state image list:
Gets or sets the ImageList associated with application-defined states in the control.
docs.microsoft.com
If that the state icons are too subtle and you need a more web like look of graying out an image, you can implement an owner drawn list view and draw each of the images yourself. When you encounter an image that needs to be grayed out or otherwise marked as used, you could use one of the GDI methods to draw the image with a color transform applied.