Write the loop as suggested by Michael. The processor might even have its own instructions for copying a byte from one register into a different byte in another (or even combining multiple byte copies into a single instruction). Look at the assembler for the bit shift and or solution and the union and see which is more efficient. I'm interested to hear how much faster it becomes.

Have you thought of declaring a union of a int and four chars for imgPtr and allowing the compiler to effectively decided how to do the bit shifts when you assign r g and b ? Also decrementing loops are faster since they simply require a compare with 0 and loop instruction rather than loading two values comparing and then looping.