PHP does not have built in image functions for BMP.
There have been a few attempts to create functions to do this.
You can find a robust and well documented version in this comment in the PHP documentation: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imagecreatefromwbmp.php#86214
Here is the function from that comment without the excellent documentation which makes much longer but much more readable:
public function imagecreatefrombmp($p_sFile)
{
$file = fopen($p_sFile,"rb");
$read = fread($file,10);
while(!feof($file)&&($read<>""))
$read .= fread($file,1024);
$temp = unpack("H*",$read);
$hex = $temp[1];
$header = substr($hex,0,108);
if (substr($header,0,4)=="424d")
{
$header_parts = str_split($header,2);
$width = hexdec($header_parts[19].$header_parts[18]);
$height = hexdec($header_parts[23].$header_parts[22]);
unset($header_parts);
}
$x = 0;
$y = 1;
$image = imagecreatetruecolor($width,$height);
$body = substr($hex,108);
$body_size = (strlen($body)/2);
$header_size = ($width*$height);
$usePadding = ($body_size>($header_size*3)+4);
for ($i=0;$i<$body_size;$i+=3)
{
if ($x>=$width)
{
if ($usePadding)
$i += $width%4;
$x = 0;
$y++;
if ($y>$height)
break;
}
$i_pos = $i*2;
$r = hexdec($body[$i_pos+4].$body[$i_pos+5]);
$g = hexdec($body[$i_pos+2].$body[$i_pos+3]);
$b = hexdec($body[$i_pos].$body[$i_pos+1]);
$color = imagecolorallocate($image,$r,$g,$b);
imagesetpixel($image,$x,$height-$y,$color);
$x++;
}
unset($body);
return $image;
}