Fade between two images

Fade between two images

I want to fade from one image to another in my gallery, and I know that the innerfade plugin can do this. I don't really want to preload all of the images on the page, like it seems you have to, because there could be hundreds and they are about 300K each. I'd rather preload only the next image. Currently, the code preloads the next image in the list by creating a new Image object and setting the source. After that, it just switches the image source using image.src = preload.src. Is it possible to fade this transition instead of a harsh instant change?

Thanks for the help.