---
title: Generate Dummy Images With Node
date: 2018-10-29
tags: nodejs, images, imagemagick
source: https://brianchildress.co/blog/generate-dummy-images-with-node
---

# Generate Dummy Images With Node

I recently had a need for some dummy images, a lot of dummy images, like ~150K images. The idea was simple, I've been working on an application that serves images through a custom UI. The images themselves contain highly-sensitive business data. I couldn't have copies of the images available for development, that's a big no-no, so I needed dummy images that would match the same image format and image name for development purposes. I also needed some unique identifying information in the body of the image to indicate that I was serving the appropriate dummy image.

Here's the solution I came up with. I simply feed the image file name and some body text to the function and it spits out a simple .png image. Using [Imagemagick](https://www.imagemagick.org/script/index.php) installed on my development environment (Ubuntu in a Docker Container) I was able to leverage the power of Imagemagick with NodeJS to generate all of the images pretty quickly.

### Getting Started
Install [Imagemagick](https://www.imagemagick.org/script/download.php) following the instructions for your environment.

Then in our project we need the [_imagemagick_](https://www.npmjs.com/package/imagemagick) NPM module installed. The module is simply a wrapper around the _imagemagick_ package installed at the OS level.

In our _app.js_ we need a single function, _generateImage()_ that accepts a single object with parameters like the file name, body text, etc. We'll use the function to generate an image. Here we're using the `convert` method from Imagemagick to 'convert' an image generated on a the Imagemagick canvas to a more portable image format like .jpg.

_app.js_
```js
const imagemagick = require('imagemagick');

const generateImage = (options) => {

  const args = [
    "-density", `${options.resolution * options.sampling_factor}`,
    "-size", `${options.size * options.sampling_factor}x${options.size * options.sampling_factor}`,
    `canvas:${options.background_color}`,
    "-fill", options.text_color,
    "-pointsize", `${options.point_size}`,
    "-gravity", `${options.gravity}`,
    "-annotate", "+0+0",
    `${options.text_to_display}`,
    "-resample", `${options.resolution}`,
    `${options.file_location}/${options.file_name}.${options.file_extension}`
  ];

  imagemagick.convert(args, (err, data) => {
    if (err) {
      console.log(`ERROR: ${err}`);
      throw err;
    } else {
      console.log('Image complete');
    }

  });
}

const options = {
  background_color: "#003366",
  file_extension: 'jpg',
  file_location: 'images',
  file_name: 'test-image',
  gravity: 'center',
  height: 100,
  point_size: 30,
  resolution: 72,
  size: 512,
  sampling_factor: 3,
  text_color: "#FFFFFF",
  text_to_display: 'This is a test image',
  width: 500
}

// Call the generate image function
generateImage(options);
```

The result is a simple image like this:

![](/src/pages/blog//src/pages/blog/generate-dummy-images-with-node/test-image.jpg)


This simple example can be easily expanded to serve all kinds of use cases.