I've finally find out how to do it. It's quite tricky.
The full description of the solution is available here - winprog.org/tutorial/transparency.html.
For polish readers here is great translation.
Simple idea in brief:
Giving bitmaps the appearance of having transparent sections is quite simple, and involves the use of a black and white Mask image in addition to the colour image that we want to look transparent.
The following conditions need to be met for the effect to work correctly: First off, the colour image must be black in all areas that we want to display as transparent. And second, the mask image must be white in the areas we want transparent, and black elsewhere. The colour and mask images are displayed as the two left most images in the example picture on this page.
Simple solution in brief:
#define TRANSPARENCY_COLOR RGB(0, 255, 255)
birdBmp = (HBITMAP) LoadBitmap(hInstance, MAKEINTRESOURCE(IDB_BITMAP1));
hbmpMask = CreateBitmapMask(birdBmp, TRANSPARENCY_COLOR);
Painting:
case WM_PAINT:
{
hdc = BeginPaint(hWnd, &ps);
HDC birdMaskHdc = CreateCompatibleDC(hdc);
BITMAP bmInfo;
GetObject(birdBmp, sizeof(bmInfo), &bmInfo);
HBITMAP hbmpOld = (HBITMAP) SelectObject(birdMaskHdc, hbmpMask);
BitBlt(hdc, 0, 0, bmInfo.bmWidth, bmInfo.bmHeight, birdMaskHdc, 0, 0, SRCAND);
SelectObject(birdMaskHdc, birdBmp);
BitBlt(hdc, 0, 0, bmInfo.bmWidth, bmInfo.bmHeight, birdMaskHdc, 0, 0, SRCPAINT);
SelectObject(birdMaskHdc, hbmpOld);
DeleteDC(birdMaskHdc);
EndPaint(hWnd, &ps);
break;
}
Cleaning:
case WM_DESTROY:
{
DeleteObject(hbmpMask);
DeleteObject(birdBmp);
PostQuitMessage(0);
break;
}
Function which is responsible for creating bitmap mask:
HBITMAP CreateBitmapMask(HBITMAP hbmColour, COLORREF crTransparent)
{
HDC hdcMem, hdcMem2;
HBITMAP hbmMask, hbmOld, hbmOld2;
BITMAP bm;
GetObject( hbmColour, sizeof( BITMAP ), & bm );
hbmMask = CreateBitmap( bm.bmWidth, bm.bmHeight, 1, 1, NULL );
hdcMem = CreateCompatibleDC( NULL );
hdcMem2 = CreateCompatibleDC( NULL );
hbmOld =( HBITMAP ) SelectObject( hdcMem, hbmColour );
hbmOld2 =( HBITMAP ) SelectObject( hdcMem2, hbmMask );
SetBkColor( hdcMem, crTransparent );
BitBlt( hdcMem2, 0, 0, bm.bmWidth, bm.bmHeight, hdcMem, 0, 0, SRCCOPY );
BitBlt( hdcMem, 0, 0, bm.bmWidth, bm.bmHeight, hdcMem2, 0, 0, SRCINVERT );
SelectObject( hdcMem, hbmOld );
SelectObject( hdcMem2, hbmOld2 );
DeleteDC( hdcMem );
DeleteDC( hdcMem2 );
return hbmMask;
}