Is BMP?

Are .bmp's the only picture format you can use with msvc++ ? .Bmp's tend to be pretty big in size, and I would like to add some nice graphics to my program, but even a little picture in .bmp format is 26kb, and the whole point of this program is filesize. Right now without any pictures, its 32kb. I would like to keep the filesze under 45kb, but with a .bmp, it goes over that limit ? Does anybody know how to use other picture file formats with msvc++ ? I program using pure API, no MFC.

Windows directly supports bitmaps. For other data types, you will have to find out how they are stored, and decompress them so you can display them. There is code for this stuff all over the web.

Z.

i'll look around :)

Windows 98/2000 support JFIF images as well, you need to check the docs for the API parameters. However, the easiest way is just to load them yourself :)

ImLib (or something like that) loads lots of formats. PNG is probably the best alternative to BMP, go to www.libpng.org and the "png" link.

ok well i found quite a few libs that display alot of different file formats. They all will up my final exe size to over 150 kb and thats without pictures :(. Oh well i just won't use any images :(

Maybe zLib would help.

libpng uses zLib internally.