How can the use of large, high-resolution images impact website performance in PHP projects?

Large, high-resolution images can significantly impact website performance in PHP projects by increasing load times and consuming more server resources. To mitigate this issue, images should be optimized for the web by resizing them to appropriate dimensions and compressing them without sacrificing quality. Additionally, lazy loading techniques can be implemented to defer the loading of images until they are within the user's viewport.

// Example code for resizing and compressing images in PHP
function resizeImage($source, $destination, $width, $height) {
    $image = imagecreatefromjpeg($source);
    $resized = imagescale($image, $width, $height);
    imagejpeg($resized, $destination, 80); // 80 is the image quality, can be adjusted
    imagedestroy($image);
    imagedestroy($resized);
}