Poor performance resizing multiple images using Smart Image Resizer

I'm using Smart Image Resizer to resize images on the fly and it works great - for pages with few images.

However, when loading a page containing 72 images, it takes 6-7 seconds to load (on localhost). If I just output the filenames, (not using image.php), the page loads within a second.

This is what I do:

1. Loop through开发者_如何学C an array containing 18 galleries (path to folder)

2. Read the first 4 images from each folder

3. Output image using image.php

I would expect the page to be slow the first time it's loaded, because it needs to generate the new images that are stored in the /imagecache/ folder.

But it looks like it's crunching all the files for every page load, and THEN compares it to the cached files to see if there are any changes(?).

Is there any way to speed up this process?