Using setSize before reading an image file tells ImageMagick to resize the image immediately on load - this can give a substantial increase in performance time and save memory and disk resources for large images:<?php$image = new Imagick();$image->setSize(800,600);$image->readImage($file);?>This might also save you having to call thumbnailImage to resize the image. On my server, this only made a difference with jpgs - pngs and gifs were loaded at full size which took much longer (30s or more compared to 6s for a similar sized jpg).