In the last year, there’s been a wave of helpful placeholder services. What’s a placeholder? Well, when you’re working on a new website, isn’t it a waste of time to use stock images, cropped to the right dimensions? A placeholder service allows you to automatically use a random image at the desired dimensions with minimal effort.

In the last week, I’ve compiled a list – in no particular order – of what I consider to be the most useful and flexible placeholder services on the web. Certainly, for most of you, you’ll end up picking one or two of the following to use in your own projects.