An somewhat old Python script file to create "Ghost Thumbnails" see: http://www.deelan.com/dev/ghost-thumbnails/. Requires Cheetah template engine and Python Imaging Library.

## index_tmpl.html
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Ghost thumbnails</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
#gallery a {background: transparent url(.thumbnails.jpg) top left no-repeat;}
</style>
</head>
<body id="photos-page">

<div id="main">

<div id="content">

<h1>
#raw
Index of <!--#echo var="REQUEST_URI" -->
#end raw
</h1>

<!-- dir listing follows -->

<div id="gallery">
#for index, image in enumerate($image_names)
    <a style="background-position: 0 ${index*100*-1}px" href="$image"><span>$image</span></a>
#end for
    <div class="cut">&nbsp;</div>
</div>

<!-- /dir listing -->

</div> <!-- / content -->


</div> <!-- / main -->


</body>
</html>

## makethumbs.py
#!/usr/bin/python
from Cheetah.Template import Template
import Image

TEMPLATE_PATH = './index_tmpl.html'

THUMBNAIL_SIZE = 100, 100
THUMBNAILS_NAME = '.thumbnails.jpg'

IMAGE_EXTS = ('.jpg', '.JPG')

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

def make_thumbnail(file_dir, filenames):

    w, h = THUMBNAIL_SIZE

    image_count = len(filenames)

    thumbnail_image = Image.new('RGB', (w, image_count * h))

    for index, filename in enumerate(filenames):
        img = _make_thumbnail(file_dir, filename)
        thumbnail_image.paste(img, (0, index * h))

        del img

    thumbnail_image.save(os.path.join(file_dir, THUMBNAILS_NAME), 'JPEG', quality=70)

    del thumbnail_image


def _make_thumbnail(file_dir, filename):
    """
    Write an image and its thumbnail to disk.
    """

    img = Image.open(os.path.join(file_dir, filename))
    width, height = img.size

    if width > height:
        # landscape
        size = THUMBNAIL_SIZE
    else:
        # portrait
        size = THUMBNAIL_SIZE[1], THUMBNAIL_SIZE[0]

    # convert to RGB
    if img.mode == 'P':
        img = img.convert('RGB')

    # crop to a square region and make thumbnail out of it
    size = min(width, height)
    img = img.crop((width/2-size/2, height/2-size/2, width/2+size/2, height/2+size/2))

    # thumbnail for the image
    img.thumbnail(THUMBNAIL_SIZE, Image.ANTIALIAS)

    return img

def fill_index_template(template_path, image_names):
    from cgi import escape
    return Template(file=template_path, searchList=[locals()]).respond()

# -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

import glob

def walk_dir(dir, exts):

    image_names = []

    for filename in os.listdir(dir):
        _, ext = os.path.splitext(filename)
        if filename == THUMBNAILS_NAME:
            continue # skip

        if ext in exts:
            image_names.append(filename)

    if image_names:
        make_thumbnail(dir, image_names)

    return image_names

import time, sys, os


def main():

    image_names = walk_dir(os.getcwd(), IMAGE_EXTS)
    if image_names:
        print fill_index_template(TEMPLATE_PATH, image_names)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()