Read a PNG Using Win32 / C++

Question

That there is no simple way to read a PNG file into a memory bitmap in native Windows seemed impossible, but after much googling I'm beginning to believe it. The libpng/zlib combination is just too big. Any third-party libraries Win32 libraries out there for reading a PNG?

Edit: The boost::gil::png solution is much more complex than I'd hoped, too. Just need a single call that takes a file name and fills a memory buffer with pixels.

Answer 1

libgd is an excellent library that can be used in Windows and has bindings for many popular languages.

Answer 2

There is some built-in stuff you can use: IImgCtx and on later versions of windows you also have WIC

Answer 3

Or of course you could use GDI+ - The Bitmap object takes a string constructor and loads the specified file into memory. That way you dont' need any external libraries, just that which comes with windows.

Answer 4

I have successfully used libpng to do this.