We have a clone of vbAccelerator ImageList control we are trying to support. Is there an easy way to implement the ability to upload PNG images "as is" into this control?

vbAccelerator ImageList is a handy wrapper for the native Windows image list functionality, so in fact it is a question how to upload PNGs into any Windows image list. The standard way to upload an image file into an image list is to get a handle to the compatible bitmap with the WinAPI LoadImage function and then pass this handle to ImageList_Add or ImageList_AddMasked (which is implemented in vbAccelerator ImageList). But this way does not work for PNG files as Windows API can't process them.

I tried to find a solution in the Internet, but saw posts like the following one:

How would I load a PNG image using Win32/GDI (no GDI+ if possible)?

We are advised to use external libraries we need to install. Is there a way to implement what we need without installing any additional packages? If it helps, we can admit that the surrounding version is not less than Windows XP and use any built-in Windows library that comes with this or later version of the OS.