This is a tutorial that I found interesting and quite easy.
Zoom Effect Tutorial

It is not necessary to install the Layer Effects plug-in in order to create an inner shadow. Just invert your selection before applying a Drop Shadow and the shadow will be created inside the original selection.

Nonetheless, nice tutorial. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks Saul, I didn't realize that.

Nice tut Molly. I've been looking for something similar but with more of a magnifying glass effect where the image is distorted to look like it is larger in the middle and kind of gradually sqooshed toward the edges. anybody know the best way to do this?

Thanks Drac. There must be a way to do that, I wonder if bump mapping would work somehow.

Try the Filters>Distort>Lens Distortion and crank up the zoom value.

Wow, now your President has droop eye. Looks like that would work great on text.

I tried that Rod but it only gives me the zoom effect. I tried to crank up the edge setting all the way but it only seems to affect the upper right edge and only slightly. What I'm looking for is that edge effect to be more pronounced and also evenly distributed all the way around like a real magnifying glass looks like due to the convex shape of the lens.

I've also tried to use the Fisheye filter in gimic but the results are way too pronounced in the center.

There needs to be a way to "feather" the distortion amount radially to get the more realistic magnification effect and not just zoomed in.

Drac, you might find something helpful in this post. It's not a tutorial but perhaps you can use the info in it.

Magnifying Glass Effect

Besides blur and dim, one can also very simply reduce the background contrast.

Thanks O. That was more like what I was looking for but it also gave me another idea. The effect I ended up with is a bit more than I was after, but to me it looks better than the other methods. I used Map to Sphere on the magnified portion and added the gloss to the left side .

Clever idea, mapping it to a sphere, Drac.

Yes that looks real good now.Map to spear is a genius idea.I wonder if this could be duped in GMIC as a filter?
GMIC can already create a sphere, so why not have it do that on a top duplicated layer and have a few adjustments like glare and sphere grow? I think that would be perfect. Then you just add your own magnifying glass image on top and voila!

You guys are going to have this right down to a science. That is a very good one Drac. It looks just like what you wanted.

Just can't stop playing with stuff.

Thanks guys-n-gals. I think the sphere method does look the best. Of course I'm biased just a bit (he-he) but I would definitely like to see a "magnify" filter in GMIC like Rod suggested, or just the filter by itself would be great. I can see several applications for this like applying it to a layer and be able to move it around like with that feathered, blurred thing we all just played with recently. (I forget what it was called).

Now....I want to try to make it rectangular like some magnifying glasses are made.
If there were a way to somehow feather the distortion rather than a map to sphere operation, you could zoom & feather and apply it to any shape you wanted. Now that would be the ticket!

Reminds me of an image I designed last year.

I remember that one Mike. It was a tute wasn't it?

Very interesting what you have experienced in this thread.
Thanks!