by Xavi Esteve
on April 12, 2011
(2 minute read)
Direct link to the tool: Flicksourcer
Jonathan Foucher created Flickholdr a few weeks ago and I am impressed by how good the system is. It is not like other dummy image generators where you get a grey box or images of cats, it allows you to source random Creative Commons images from Flickr or even keyword relevant ones, scale them to your desired size and add a Copyright tag with the authors name automatically.
Flickholdr is mainly designed to be used as a placeholder image tool although I had been using it a couple times to source images for live posts in a quick way, allowing me to save time browsing Flickr for free licensed images and scaling them in Fireworks/Photoshop. The minor problem I had with Flickholdr is that I had to keep changing the URL manually one by one and finding the perfect image was quite tedious.
So I came up with this little script that loads several images in one click. You specify the image size, some relevant keywords (optional) and the quantity of images to generate. Try to keep the quantity number as low as possible since Jonathan shares the service for free and if many requests are made it can turn the service slow for other users.
Find the generator tool here:
Flicksourcer https://xaviesteve.com/pro/flicksourcer/
You can also download the source code completely for free since it has been coded using JavaScript, jQuery and HTML. If you host it in your site remember to mention and link back to Jonathan and to myself (CC-by-sa 3.0).
Another related tool
Are you constantly creating mockups and wireframes? Check out Real Ipsum, a topic oriented English dummy text generator that generates random English text which looks better than Lorem ipsum. And the bookmarklet grabs keywords from the website you choose so the text is completely relevant. Also generates people and company names, random dates, colours, etc. Check it out!
3 comments
IminMilagros says:
Great work Xavi, love the simplicity. Just a quick question on giving credit from a creative commons license perspective, is the copyright and name tag embedded into the image enough? I’ve read a lot of places that it’s more elaborate than that “Photo used under Creative Commons from NAME” and also a link back to the original work (ie flickr). What are your thoughts?
Xavi Author says:
Hi IminMilagros,
The Creative Commons license is somehow vague with this… Keeping things short you are required to quote the author or licensor. Providing a link is encouraged and a nice thing to do (see here http://bit.ly/iHK6WE ).
The way Flickholdr (FlickSourcer displays images from there) attributes the images should be considered the minimum necessary to comply with the license.
If you just use the images for decorative purposes then just naming the owner should be reasonable enough.
If your work is heavily based in the CCed work then I would definitely provide a link, a full license note like the one you mention and also inform the owner that you have used his work.