What best practices should be followed when using PHP to process image data for mapping or game development purposes?

When processing image data for mapping or game development purposes in PHP, it is important to follow best practices to ensure efficient and secure handling of the data. One key practice is to use PHP's built-in image processing functions, such as imagecreatefrompng() and imagecopyresampled(), to manipulate the images. Additionally, it is important to properly validate and sanitize user input to prevent security vulnerabilities.

// Example of using PHP's image processing functions to resize an image
$sourceImage = imagecreatefrompng('source.png');
$width = imagesx($sourceImage);
$height = imagesy($sourceImage);
$targetWidth = 200;
$targetHeight = 200;
$targetImage = imagecreatetruecolor($targetWidth, $targetHeight);
imagecopyresampled($targetImage, $sourceImage, 0, 0, 0, 0, $targetWidth, $targetHeight, $width, $height);
imagepng($targetImage, 'resized.png');
imagedestroy($sourceImage);
imagedestroy($targetImage);