There's Shadowcraft Mage to make figments painfully real...
The fact they still obscure sight on a failed save is pretty nice. In one group I was a part of, the Bard often used image spells to make it look like we were giant pandas. Which was both funny and practical -- the images covered us, so anyone who fails the save we got concealment against.
Don't neglect the significant range of the image spells. Often a good use for them is to create something in the far distance, as a distraction, to set up an ambush, and so on. Obviously the feat or metamagic rod of Silent Spell helps greatly with these kinds of uses.
There have been previous threads on listing creative sues for Silent Image, but I don't feel like searching google for them at this hour.
Some I remember included anti-army tactics like readied action to throw it up as a wall (possibly w/ protruding barbs) to spook charging cavalry horses. One involved faking a bridge over a chasm, I forget the specfics the person used. It might have been something like disguising a cruddy rope-bound bridge as a sturdier one via the overlapping illusion, so once too much weight gets on...
One unfortunate issue with illusion spells is the whole spellcraft...thing. Definitely consider going for the False Theurgy skill trick (C.Scoundrel), so once/encounter (or per 5 min. out of combat) you can trick any mages trying to spellcraft you into thinking you're casting the actual spell (instead of mimicing it). FT has no roll involved, no chance of failure. It's potentially very useful to an illusionist, thus.
