Information on Bitmaps

Hello. I am looking for some information about bitmaps. Is there a comprehensive book anyone can recommend on the subject? Right now I am just trying to create a bitmap, edit it, store it in memory for a while, and display it. I am currently using CBitmap class in MFC for this.

I am able to create it using CreateCompatibleBitmap(...) and display it using BitBlt(...). However, I am trying to understand how to save it in memory so that I can pass it to another function to edit or display it. The procedure looks like this:

CreateBitmap()
EditBitmap()
DisplayBitmap()
EditBitmap()
... and so on.

What I would like to do is pass a bitmap to these functions and be able to store the result. I do not currently understand exactly how a device context works: what structures are involved and how information passed. A tutorial for this or one explaining the purpose and organization of CObject and the classes inheriting from it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your help!