Lorem Picsum Generator

Lorem Picsum serves real photographs at whatever dimensions you ask for, which makes a layout look like a layout rather than a wireframe full of grey rectangles. That is the argument for using it during design review: grey boxes hide the problems that photographs cause, and a card grid that looks balanced with placeholders can fall apart the moment the images have actual contrast and detail in them.

The part that catches people out is the seed. A plain size URL returns a different random photo on every request, including every reload during development, so a component that renders three of them will shuffle on each refresh and screenshots will never match. Adding a seed makes the choice deterministic — the same seed always resolves to the same photo — which is what you want in a demo, a Storybook entry or anything you intend to screenshot. Use a specific photo ID instead when you have found an image that works and want exactly that one.

The generator also writes a responsive srcset, because the placeholder stage is the right time to get that markup correct rather than adding it later. The widths it emits are the ones the service will actually deliver, so the browser's selection logic behaves the same as it will with your production images.

One thing to be clear about: these URLs point at someone else's server. They are a development convenience, not something to ship. A production page pointing at picsum.photos is one outage away from a broken layout, and the images are not licensed for you to present as your own content.