preload

preload

I've been experimenting with several preloads found in this forum and am not sure which is most effective. I've been testing with:

$.fn.preload = function() {
  this.each(function(){
    $('<img/>')[0].src = this;
 });
}
  
then:
$(["images/IMG_00000.jpg", "images/hip1_00001.png", "images/hip1_00002.png",...etc.... ']).preload();


You will notice my images are in folder called 'images'. Totally naive question, but does the preload function code above $('<img/>') refer to a folder called 'img' or does that refer to the image file?

Should my PNGs be in a folder called 'img' and not 'images'? 
I have a huge number of png files to load (over 200)