read jpeg or bmp to memory in vb 2005

[brendon]

I need to read in a jpeg or bmp file in to memory and then save these files in to a resource file for distribution in a form other than jpeg or bmp. This requires only one file to be distributed, the resource file. Then I need to be able to open the resource file and read the individual jpeg or bmp file from there. I may need to do other format files as well if this all works.

1: What memory structure would I read the files in to? and how would I declare
and initialise this structure?

2: How do I write to the resource file and read from it, this needs to be done by
my program and not externally. It's actually part of the reason for writing the program in the first place.

3: I may need to do some encoding / decoding of the files as I read and write
them so I would need to do a byte by byte read and decode or byte by byte
write and encode. This will be faster if I set up two memory based structures
and do the encode / decode in memory, then simply read/write the encoded
or decoded version from memory depending on which is needed.

can anyone help with some sample code?
thanks in advance