Saving created bitmap as 16, 256, or 24-bit color format

Hi there,
I'm a newbie in the world of device contexts and bitmaps.

Here's what I'm trying to do:

I have working code to take a screen shot of the entire desktop and save it as a bitmap file. However, since I'm using a bitmap object tied to the device context and that seems to rely on the color setting of my current windows setting (which is at 24-bit color) I can only save this bmp file at 24-bit color format. This takes up alot of room.

I was wondering if there is some clever code to save my bitmap files
into more simple formats such as 16 color or 256 color--regardless of what my current desktop color setting is.

Any practical code examples would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for your help.

Colour Depth Control - saving a true Win32 BMP file with your chosen colour depth


Hope that helps...