A picture says a thousand words, and a larger image is easier to see, track, love, and comment on. This makes zoom-in/zoom-out effect a perfect solution for webpages and blogs hosting photos.
When comes to displaying images on your website, you may want that your reader can see them in a big size. Some of the readers will be having small resolutions and others with huge screens. With this in mind, you need to provide tools that will enable everyone to enjoy pictures.
Interestingly, there is a lot of image zoom JavaScript libraries that can provide this exact functionality.
This is a list of the 10 best JavaScript libraries to zoom your images within the document for a better user experience. I hope you like it and don’t forget to spread the world.
Originally Published Dec 17 2017, updated Jan 12 2023
1. Pure JavaScript Medium-style Image Zoom Library – medium-zoom
A lightweight and dependency-free JavaScript library used for creating a responsive, user-friendly image zoom / lightbox effect as seen on Medium.com pages.
2. OpenSeadragon
An open-source, web-based viewer for zoomable images, implemented in pure JavaScript.
3. Smooth Image Zooming As Seen On Medium.com – zooming.js
A lightweight, dependency-free, mobile-friendly image zooming library inspired by Medium.com.
4. Smooth Image Hover Zoom Effect with Pure JavaScript – Drift
A standalone and highly configurable JavaScript library that provides responsive, smooth hover (or touch) zoom effect on images.
5. Minimal Inline Image Zoom In JavaScript – Amplify
A lightweight inline image zoom library which allows users to increase the size of images in their original positions. Press on the Enter and Space keys to close the enlarged images.
6. Google Photos Inspired Image Zoom & Pan Plugin – iv-viewer
A feature-rich, touch-enabled jQuery & Vanilla JavaScript image viewer plugin that provides zooming and panning functionalities for your images, inspired by Google Photo.
7. Lightense.js
Lightense.js is a lightweight and simple to use JavaScript library for image zooming as you seen on Medium.com.
8. Zoom Image On Hover – js-image-zoom
A lightweight and zero-dependency JavaScript image zoom library to enlarge part of your image and display the zoomed image in a specific container on mouse hover.
9. Drag To Move & Mouse Wheel To Zoom Library – wheel-zoom
A vanilla JavaScript zoom & pan library which applies drag to move and mouse wheel to zoom functionalities on the image or any HTML content within a container.
10. Zoom In/Out Images With JavaScript – zoomist.js
A tiny JavaScript library for zoom and panning images using the mouse wheel & drag. Also supports custom zoom controls like sliders and buttons.
Conclusion:
Hopefully, this article was able to shed some light on the currently available JavaScript libraries out there for image zooming.
Remember, no matter which you choose, it’s not just about picking the most popular libraries. Instead, consider your audience and requirements, so that you can choose the right library for your needs.
That way, you will be able to get the results you need without any frustration or unnecessary time spent trying to make a JavaScript library work with your project.
More Resources:
To find more JavaScript and/or CSS libraries to provide zooming functionality on your images, don’t forget to check out our other awesome resources.