Systems and methods are provided for viewing portions of an image in high resolution and in context with a full image, which is displayed at a base resolution that is lower resolution than the resolution of the high-resolution image. A client device can send a request to a server for a composed image comprised of the base-resolution image overlaid at the area of interest with a virtual lens showing the area of interest in high-resolution image. The request can include the coordinates of the area of interest relative to a reference point on the image, the desired resolution level for the high-resolution image, and the virtual lens size and shape. The desired resolution can fall into a range above the resolution of the base-resolution image and up to the resolution of the maximum-resolution image stored on, generated on, or input to the server.