Basic VB6 PNG Compiler

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LaVolpe's answer above is excellent and comprehensive for GDI+. You'd be hard-pressed to find a cleaner solution that avoids the use of 3rd-party libraries.

If you don't mind 3rd-party libraries, the open-source FreeImage library provides excellent 16-bit grayscale support:

http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/

FreeImage includes a comprehensive VB6 module, and using the DLL from VB is simple. To create a 16-bit grayscale image, you basically do the following:

- Allocate a new 16-bit grayscale image at the same dimensions as your image
- Use CopyMemory to copy the bits of your displacement map over the bits of the allocated image. (FreeImage uses the same 4-byte alignment rule as Windows, so CopyMemory works without issue.)
- Save the completed image as a 16-bit PNG, TIFF, or any other format you can think up.