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FPOimg – Placeholder image service with gradients and format support

FPOimg – Placeholder image service with gradients and format support

by eatmyshardz·Mar 15, 2026·1 point·3 comments
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AI Analysis

●MidCozyShip It

Placeholder images with CSS named colors and gradients when placehold.co lacks style.

Strengths
  • •CSS named colors save time hunting for hex codes during rapid prototyping sessions.
  • •Open source codebase allows self-hosting for teams with strict privacy requirements.
Weaknesses
  • •Many free alternatives exist, making differentiation difficult beyond gradient presets.
  • •Utility is limited to prototyping, offering no long-term retention value.
Target Audience

Frontend developers, designers

Similar To

Placehold.co · via.placeholder.com · DummyImage

Post Description

Hey HN -

Years ago I built FPOimg (fpoimg.com) as a placeholder image generator that I kept wishing existed.

I've always wanted to keep it simple, open source, fast, and reliable. I've recently updated with additional features to make it more modern, useful, and pretty.

The basics work like you'd expect: /800x600 gives you an 800×600 image, /500x200/Hello adds a caption. Nothing revolutionary there.

I added: - Gradient backgrounds — 20 presets (/800x600?gradient=sunset) or pass your own two colors - 148 CSS named colors — /400x300/tomato/white instead of hunting for hex codes - Multiple formats — change the extension to get .webp, .gif, .png, or .jpg (and experimental SVG support) - Multiline text — line breaks in captions, auto-wrapping for longer text

It's Flask + Pillow, nothing fancy on the backend. Self-hostable if you prefer that.

Live at https://fpoimg.com, source at https://github.com/kylehayes/fpoimg

Happy to hear what's missing or what would make it more useful.

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