Any way to optimize heavy image resizing with Intervention Image? - php

Question

I have an upload form which allows multiple files to be selected. The original files are quite heavy - approx. 10MB each.
Each uploaded file goes through the same resizing and saving process:
<?php
$file = $request->file('qqfile'); // Huge JPG file in the request
$image = Image::make($file); // Building an Intervention Image object
$sizes = array(2560, 1980, 1366, 1024, 768, 480, 320);
foreach ($sizes as $size) {
$image = $image->widen($size->width);
Storage::put('public/image_'.$size.'.jpg', $image->encode('jpg', 90));
}
Now, my understanding is that in the foreach loop it's the 10MB, original image object that's being reused. So, during each iteration, the 10MB image object gets resized to a smaller size - e.g. from 4200x2460 to 320x187 in the last iteration, and then saved on the disk.
If I'm correct (am I?) then it's not very efficient, as the GD library operations are quite expensive and the server CPU can get hit stronger than it should.
Is there any way I can optimize the resizing process? E.g. for each iteration use already-resized image object, instead of the huge original one?
I would avoid this, though: resize - save - read from disk - resize again, as the disk I/O can get hit as well. What I have in mind is this: resize the original - resize to the next size - ... - resize the last size, then save each. This means I need a way to store a resized Intervention object in a variable, but not save it yet (as it will be saved in the last step).
Does this make sense? Any ideas?
Thank you.