How to create a *.mif (Memory Initialization File) from a picture (*.bmp)

The mif format is explained in Quartus Help when you look up "mif". It's a rather simple format and you can probably write a script or small software on your PC that reads the bmp file and writes the contents to a text file to generate the mif. Alternatively you can use a hex conversion program such as srecord (http://srecord.sourceforge.net/) that knows how to export to the MIF format.