ziad:

however I’m still unsure whether it can handle zip file formats or requires them to be unzipped first?


ImageFolder expects to find valid image files in each subfolder and won’t unzip nested folders first.



 ziad:

Furthermore, what if my dataset images do not have a particular like in my example where they are just facial images.


I assume you are asking about a use case which doesn’t provide image files in each subfolder?
If so, you could write a custom Dataset as explained here 6.