Generate a Placeholder Image
A grey box with its own size written across it, for mocking up layouts before the real assets exist. Unlike a placeholder service, this produces a real file you own — no third-party request, no hotlink that breaks when the service goes down or blocks your domain.
Why a local file beats a placeholder service
Services like the various placehold domains are convenient right up to the point where
they aren't. They add a third-party request to every page load, they've historically gone down or
changed their URL format without warning, they can't be used offline or in a build that has no network
access, and pointing production-adjacent code at someone else's server is a dependency you didn't need.
A checked-in PNG has none of those problems.
The dimensions printed on the image are the genuinely useful part: when a layout is full of grey boxes, being able to read "400 × 400" off the one that's misbehaving saves opening dev tools. Leave the label blank to get that automatically, or type your own text — "hero", "avatar", "product shot" — when identifying the slot matters more than its size.
The diagonal cross
The cross and border are the conventional signal that an image is intentionally a placeholder and not a broken asset or a design decision. It's worth keeping for anything a client or colleague will see, so nobody mistakes a stand-in for finished work. Turn it off when you want a clean coloured block — at which point Solid color or Gradient PNG may be what you actually want.
The text is auto-sized to fit the box, so it stays readable from a 60×60 thumbnail up to a 4000 px banner without you adjusting anything. Very narrow boxes will still clip a long custom label — shorten it or leave it blank.
FAQ
Can I generate a whole set of sizes at once?
Not from this page — one at a time. Generate the largest, then run it through Thumbnail generator with a list of widths, though the printed dimensions will then be wrong for the resized copies.
Which font is used?
Geist if your browser has it loaded from this page, falling back to your system UI font. Text is rasterised into the PNG, so the recipient needs nothing installed.
Can the background be transparent?
Not here — a transparent placeholder is invisible, which defeats the purpose. For a genuinely blank transparent file, use Transparent PNG.
How big is the file?
Tiny — a couple of flat colours and some text compress extremely well. Even 4000×4000 is usually well under 100 KB.