Question 1

What is the best placeholder image service?

Accepted Answer

placehold.co: best for solid-color placeholders with custom text. Fast, reliable, configurable colors and font. Picsum Photos: best for realistic photo placeholders — serves random Unsplash photos at any size. via.placeholder: simple numeric placeholders, similar to placehold.co. For prototyping with real content feel: Picsum. For wireframing with colored blocks: placehold.co. Lorem Picsum (picsum.photos) now redirects to the Picsum service.

Question 2

How do I use placeholder images in HTML?

Accepted Answer

<img src='https://placehold.co/800x400' alt='Placeholder' width='800' height='400'>. Always include width and height attributes — this prevents layout shift (CLS) during page load. For responsive images: use CSS width: 100%; height: auto; on the img element and set width/height attributes to the intrinsic size. For Picsum with a seed for reproducibility: https://picsum.photos/seed/mypage/800/400.

Question 3

Can I use placeholder images in production?

Accepted Answer

No — placeholder services are for development and prototyping only. Production images should be your own assets served from your CDN or a proper image hosting service. Using placeholder services in production means your images depend on a third-party service's uptime, are slow (external request), and may change at any time (Picsum serves random photos by default). Always replace placeholders with real assets before launch.

Question 4

How do I create a placeholder with a specific color in placehold.co?

Accepted Answer

placehold.co URL format: https://placehold.co/{width}x{height}/{background}/{text-color}. Example: https://placehold.co/600x400/3b82f6/ffffff — a 600×400 blue placeholder with white text. Add ?text=My+Label to set custom label text. Add ?font=Roboto to change the font. The background and text colors can be HEX values without the # prefix or named colors (red, blue, etc.).

Service	Image type	Custom color	Best for
placehold.co	Solid color + text	✅ Yes	Wireframes, color-coded regions, labeled blocks
Picsum Photos	Random real photo	❌ No	Prototypes needing photo realism
Picsum (seeded)	Fixed real photo	❌ No	Reproducible mockups — same image every load
via.placeholder	Solid color + text	✅ Yes	Simple numeric placeholder, similar to placehold.co
dummyimage.com	Solid color + text	✅ Yes	Alternative to placehold.co with more format options
loremflickr.com	Keyword-matched photo	❌ No	Prototypes needing topic-specific photos

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