For protecting resources against lazy developers looking to rip off your IP, any simple encoding mechanism will do.
* Simple byte rotation would be more than sufficient. Build a list of integers 0-255, then randomize it, that's your encode/decode key. Swap bytes to encode, swap them back to decode.
* Build yourself an app to take input files and spit out encoded versions.
* Drop the encoded files into your project and they'll be be included as runtime constants. Strings.
* Build a wrapper method to decode the data and return a picture.
In rough terms:
dim p as picture = MyImageDecoder(myEncodedPic)
function MyImageDecoder(encodedData as string) as Picture{
dim decodedData as string = MyStringDecoder(encodedData)
return Picture.FromString(decodedData)
}