New Post: Opening georeferenced bitmaps

Sorry if this has been answered before, I can find nothing with the search function.

I have generated a georeferenced bitmap (.gif) file in MapWindow using the Project->Export->Georeferenced Map option, which also creates a world file (.gfw). I then want to import this into my own application developed in VisualStudio C++. I can open the .gif file easily enough, but it doesn't appear to bring in the georeferencing from the associated world file. Is there a simple way to do this, or will I need to explicitly open the world file and set each georegistration parameters individually?

For reference, my existing code to add the bitmap to my map currently is:

        MapWinGIS::ImageClass^ bmp_image = gcnew MapWinGIS::ImageClass;
        bmp_image->Open(Config->BaseMap, ImageType::USE_FILE_EXTENSION, false, nullptr);
        RealTimeMap->Projection = tkMapProjection::PROJECTION_WGS84;
        RealTimeMap->TileProvider = tkTileProvider::OpenStreetMap;
        RealTimeMap->AddLayer(bmp_image, true);

My Config class contains information about the application, BaseMap is the filename for the map I want to put data onto.

Regards,

Alan