Using and Citing Images

Using other people’s images

You can use your own images in your presentations. You can also use downloaded images, but be careful to use copyright-free images, and credit them properly.

Many images that you see online are copyrighted, meaning you can’t use them without the creator’s permission. A lot of those images have watermarks to make sure people don’t use them, or pay to use them. Don’t use watermarked images—it’s illegal and unethical. A watermark looks like this:

Where to find images

Many high-quality images are freely available online. Carefully check your image to ensure it is marked as free to use, as many of these collections often offer images for purchase! Here are some places to find them:

1. OpenVerse [New tab]
2. Pexels [New tab]
3. Unsplash [New tab]
4. Pixabay [New tab]
5. Flicker – Creative Commons license [New tab]
6. Google [New tab]: Enter your search words and click Search. Then click Images, and Tools (underneath the search bar). Then click Usage Rights and select Creative Commons Licenses.

How to give credit

Always give credit to the creators of anything you didn’t create – including images, charts, graphs, video, audio and gifs. You don’t need to credit anything you made, but you might want to include a note so your instructor knows it’s your creation.

1. Provide the credit on the slide where the image appears. 
2. Include a final slide that includes the full APA reference list entry.

Free to use with no attribution required

In an APA style paper, you should provide a figure number and title before the image.  Figure numbers and titles for images like the example below are OPTIONAL for presentations (like PowerPoint).

Figure 1: Dog sitting in front of a book

The APA Style book indicates that when you use a clip art or a stock image, that says “No Attribution required” a citation is optional.  Because Unsplash provides author information, even though it’s not mandatory, it’s considered good practice to list the details that are provided with the image.  In this case, “Photo by Jamie Street used under Unsplash license” can be included on your slide.

Image that requires attribution

Figure 1: Butterfly.

The APA Style book indicates that when you use an image like the one above that requires an attribution, you should provide the following details on your slide:

• From Title  [Photograph], by creator’s name, date, source (url). Creative Commons information.
• Figure Number and Title, like the ones shown above, are optional on your slides

On your final reference slide, you should include a reference list entry that includes Author, Intial. (date). Title. [Descripton]. Source. url.

Example:

Fowler, J. (2011). Butterfly. [Photograph]. Flickr. https://flic.kr/p/acU6L8

Attribution & References

Except where otherwise noted, this page is adapted by Amanda Quibell from “9.6 How to make slides & visuals” In Communication Essentials for College, CC BY-NC 4.0. / A derivative of “How to make slides & visuals” In Business Presentation Skills by Lucinda Atwood & Christian Westin licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Edited out content to focus specifically on citation in presentations.