Bug report: Memory issues when scaling large file

I recently had an issue with the plugin generating optimized images. The source file was 36 megapixels and scaling it with GD reached the PHP memory limit of 256MB.

Because the GD function was prefixed with @ in the WP image editor implementation the memory exhaustion error was silenced. (Not blaming you for that one.)

In an attempt to prevent WSOD issues, is it possible to raise the memory limit just prior to the image scaling event? I know that this still won’t catch every case but thought it might increase stability overall.