Win32 C/C++ Load Image from memory buffer

Question

I want to load an image (.bmp) file on a Win32 application, but I do not want to use the standard LoadBitmap/LoadImage from Windows API: I want it to load from a buffer that

Answer 1

CreateDIBSection can be a little complicated to use, but one of the things it can do is create a device-independent bitmap and give you a pointer to the buffer for the bitmap bits. Granted, you already have a buffer full of bitmap bits, but at least you could copy the data.

Speculating a bit: CreateDIBSection can also create bitmaps from file objects, and there's probably a way to get Windows to give you a file object representing a chunk of memory, which might trick CreateDIBSection into giving you a bitmap built directly from your buffer.