I published a refactored version of this experimental wrapper at the Goodies site and added additional classes for "jpeg"-named files to do speed comparisions for pure-only Smalltalk code against freeImage-Smalltalk code.
I did some tests with 1900x1200x24 large pictures. It takes around 383ms to load the jpg-based file with freeImage/Smalltalk code up to the point, where an independent Smalltalk format is there. The pure-Smalltalk version takes around 2961ms to do the same work.
Marten