Confused about bitmap colours

[simon]

I have to display a splash screen on startup and the splash screen component
software I'm using (old Visual C++ 5 component gallery if memory serves)
just puts up a bitmap. I am using VC++ 5 to build this particular app. The
bitmap editor only allows me to use 16 colours. But if I edit the bitmap
file using MS Paint, I can use all the colours I want, and save it as a
24-bit Bitmap, and everything appears to work fine. When I run the program,
the splash screen looks OK with all colours present as far I can see. I
haven't tried editing it in the Visual Studio bitmap editor - I presume that
wouldn't be a good idea.

Can I safely go ahead and do this? Is there any reason why this might cause
me problems? And if bitmaps can have 24-bit colours, why doesn't the Visual
Studio built-in editor limit me to 16?

TIA

Simon