compress photos on import

Hi there.

I'm using www class to get some photos from my local files and use them in my UI. Ive managed to make a script that loops through a folder and imports all the photos and puts them on the UI however these are very high quality pictures (7-8mb with a res of around 4000x5000). Therefore my pc goes mental on import with data up at 100% and i generally have to reboot. I fixed this by photoshoping all the photos to a preview size with a width of 512.

What I want to do is have my script automatically import the images as a small version of themselves. Whats the best way to do so?