Lorempixel is an amazing free web service that you can use to get placeholder images. All of the placeholder images are shared under a creative commons license, and thus can be freely used for all sorts of applications, like Web Design, Print etc. All you have to do is include Lorempixel’s custom URL in your code, and it’ll display a random image as a placeholder. Apart from this, Lorempixel also includes a placeholder generator, that you can use to easily generate placeholder images of dimensions up to a maximum of 1920×1920 pixels. You can even choose to have the placeholder image generated from different categories like abstract, animals, business, cats, city etc. Sounds like just what you need for that new website or blog that you’re working on? Keep reading to find out more.
Lorempixel: Primary Web UI
Lorempixel features a pretty simple and straightforward homepage. The web UI primarily consists of two sections: The top left section lists some standard Lorempixel custom URLs that you can directly embed in your code to use the random placeholder images, whereas the bottom left section is basically the placeholder generator (more on this later). The right section is less densely populated, and simply consists of a count of images Lorempixel has delivered for the current day, as well as since the service’s beginning. Here’s how the webpage looks like:
Also see: 5 Websites That Offer Royalty Free Images.
How to use random placeholder images for your use through Lorempixel?
It’s actually quite easy. Lorempixel lets you use random creative commons shared placeholder images by simply adding the custom URLs to your code. For this, the previously mentioned top section lists some variations of the custom URLs, that you can directly copy and embed in your code. Here’s a screenshot:
As illustrated by the above screenshot, adding different variations of the custom URLs gets you different kinds of placeholder images, and each custom URL has a little descriptive text after it that specifies what kind of image you’ll get while embedding that URL in your code. You can either use any random image, or an image from a specific category like sports etc. All you have to do is add the desired custom URL to your code by using the img src HTML tag (For example, to use any random image of 400×200 pixels use the URL in your code as <img src=”http://lorempixel.com/400/200″ />).
How to use the Placeholder Generator?
By default, most random placeholder images that you get by using the custom URLs in your code are, well, random. This means that you can get a picture of a cat, a building, a car or just about anything. But what if you want to use a specific type of image, or maybe an image in a non standard resolution? That’s where placeholder generator comes to the rescue. It lets you specify the exact X-Y dimensions of the image you want, and also one of the thirteen types (abstract, cats etc.) that you want it to be picked from, for using in your code. Here’s how to use the placeholder generator:
Step 1: Use the X-Y sliders to specify the dimensions of the image you want. Both X and Y can have values ranging from 0 to 1920.
Step 2: Once you’ve specified the dimensions or the resolution of the image, click the category that you want it to be picked from. You can choose from over ten categories like animals, abstract, sports, technics, fashion, and more.
Step 3: Finally, choose whether you want a colored image, or a grayscale one by choosing either color image or gray image. And that’s all. Lorempixel immediately displays a creative commons image that you can use in your code, picked from the category you’ve chosen, in the resolution and color specified by you. Simply copy the image source URL to use it in your code. How cool is that?
Here’s a sample grayscale image, measuring 550×400 pixels, chosen from the category technics.
Conclusion
Lorempixel is a great freeware source of a variety of freely usable images. Since all the images are shared under the creative commons license, they can be used freely without any risk of copyright violation and things like that. This makes Lorempixel a great resource for website designers, bloggers etc. Add to it the fact that you can specify the type, dimensions and even the color of images you want, and Lorempixel becomes even more valuable. I suggest you give it a try, you’ll love it.