I came across a great tool called Magic Thumb. It is a neat way of enlarging thumbail images using a JavaScript effect similar to a lightbox.

Features

• Enjoyable – clever effect that people enjoy using.
• Fast – the large images download after the page has fully loaded.
• Easy – integrate it into your website in minutes.
• Customisable – change the speed, keyboard behaviour, colors.
• Accessible – if JavaScript is disabled, the large image opens as link.

One good thing about it is you don’t need to load a new page or use popup windows. It just loads the images immediately on click.

The user experience is rich – people like the web 2.0 lightbox enlarge effect. Users appreciate that it is immediate – the large image enlarges on click without waiting for it to download. This gives a better experience than waiting (as with an AJAX lightbox that requests images on demand).

You can display an unlimited number of images on a page. Large images have large file sizes, so be sure to compress your images with a good ratio of size to quality (aim for a JPEG filesize of 30-70kb). You can use JPEG, PNG or GIF.

You can request a free license if you use it for non-commercial purpose like me.

Check out more here.