Generate Images & Send Mail with DLL

Hello!

I've recently finished my first DLL - Project and now i'm going to implement a lot of several functions.

1) I'd like to generate images, resize, add text, save and so on. Where to get information on how to do so with Visual Basic?

2) We use Mercurs Mailserver in the company and mostly aspSmartMail to send mails. I would like to make my own function SendMail() without using aspSmartMail or CDONTS. Is there any chance to do so? What about some code snippets? Seen a bunch of Tips (forum-search) on how to use SMTP and/or WinSock, but i'm not quite sure whetere this works with my mercur mailserver :confused:

Thanks a lot
Quentin