If you are willing to use ImageMagick.jl, this seems substantially faster on my machine:
using ImageMagick
function imagesize(filename)
wand = ImageMagick.MagickWand()
ccall((:MagickPingImage, ImageMagick.libwand), Bool, (Ptr{Cvoid}, Ptr{UInt8}), wand, filename)
size(wand)
end