How to Cite an Image or Figure

The two-layer system every style uses

Image citations separate the label from the credit. The label is the figure apparatus: a number that your prose can point to, a title, and in APA 7 a note line under the image. The credit is the source trail: who made or owns the image, when, and where a reader can find the original. The separation exists because an image usually travels - copied from a journal, a museum database, a news site - and the reader needs both the image's identity and the address of its origin to verify what they are looking at.

The in-text side follows the figure number: as Figure 2 shows, or (see Figure 2), and both styles expect every numbered figure to be mentioned in the text and every text mention to have a figure. The full reference-list entry still exists in APA 7 when the image is the kind of source you would cite elsewhere - a photograph, an artwork - while figures reproduced from other papers typically live entirely in the figure note. That division of labor is the part students skip, and skipping it is visible from across the room because an uncredited image looks exactly like an uncredited quote.

The numbers at a glance

Image citation shapes by origin — the range, and where each row actually shows up in coursework. Skim it first; the sections below explain why the range exists and which row applies to you.

The APA 7 figure-note system

APA 7 builds the apparatus in three lines. Above the image: Figure 1, then the title in italics, title case, a sentence or fragment that describes the content. Below the image: Note. followed by the credit, in the shape From Title of Article, by A. Author, Year, Journal Name, Volume (Copyright Year by Publisher), or a plainer Author, Year, Site Name. URL for images found online. The word From signals reproduction; Adapted from signals that you modified the image, which changes the copyright framing slightly and is worth getting right for figures you redraw or reformat.

The note is also where permission language goes. Student papers rarely need formal reprint permission - classroom use is broadly covered - but graduate theses and anything published do, and the note's copyright line is where the publisher's terms appear. The apparatus is graded more mechanically than students expect: number above, italic title, note below, all in the style's own typography. Graders who see Figure 1 sitting unnumbered or a note that names the website but not the image's author check the rest of the paper's citations with sharper eyes.

The MLA 9 caption pattern

MLA 9 compresses the system: below the image write Fig. 1. then a caption - Creator, Title, Year, and the holding institution or site - with the full details in a works-cited entry when the image is one you would cite as a source at all. The caption can absorb a short credit in prose; the works-cited entry carries the formal record. MLA's flexibility here is genuine, and instructor handouts vary on how much detail belongs in the caption versus the list, which is why the handout wins where it speaks.

The habits that earn credit are consistent anyway. Number figures in order of appearance, not by source. Use Fig., not Figure, in MLA. Point to the figure from the prose before it appears, so the reader meets the caption expecting it. And keep captions in the same font and size as the body text unless the handout says otherwise, because MLA treats the caption as prose. The works-cited entry, when present, alphabetizes under the creator like any other entry, which is where the alphabetizing rules apply unchanged.

Charts you made from someone else's data

The self-made figure is the most-missed case on every rubric that mentions images. A chart you built in a spreadsheet from a federal dataset is your figure and someone else's data, so the note credits the data: Note. Data from Agency Name, Year. The figure title stays yours, the data trail stays theirs, and the pattern is identical in MLA captions: chart by the author; data from Agency. Skipping the note turns a legitimate visualization into what looks like a borrowed one, and graders who recognize the dataset assume the worst.

The same logic covers edited images: a screenshot you annotated, a map you redrawed, a figure you recolored from a journal article. Adapted from in APA 7, a by-author note in the caption, and the original's full details carry the trail. This is also where the GIS-map-caption page's discipline applies to course papers in geography and planning, where a caption without a data source fails the assignment's own conventions. The one-sentence test: if the figure contains any information you did not generate, name where that information came from.

The aggregator trap and credibility

The most common real-world error is citing the aggregator: Google Images, a stock-photo site's search page, a Pinterest board. Aggregators index images they do not own, so the citation must reach the origin - the photographer, the museum, the journal - and the origin's own page is where the reliable metadata lives. When the origin genuinely cannot be found, say so honestly rather than citing the search page, and reconsider whether the image carries anything load-bearing, because an unverifiable image is the visual cousin of an undated statistic.

Stock and promotional images add a licensing note: free-license images still require the attribution their license specifies, and license terms vary, which is why the credit line belongs in the note even when the image costs nothing. On hierarchy, images follow the same tier logic as other sources - a figure from a peer-reviewed article carries the article's weight, a museum's scan carries the museum's, a random site's copy carries almost nothing - which is the what-counts-as-a-scholarly-source test applied to pictures. The source-credibility-checker tool makes the same check explicit when an image anchors an argument.

Three minutes to a clean citation

Edge-case citations punish hesitation, not ignorance: the student who spends twenty minutes googling a no-author format loses more time to doubt than the format ever costs. Decide the pattern once — title moves forward, organization counts as author, n.d. when no date exists anywhere — and apply it mechanically. Consistency across your list matters more to graders than perfect recall of manual arcana.

Automate what's mechanical. The citation generator below formats journal articles, books, chapters and websites in all three major styles, including the awkward cases on this page. Paste the metadata, copy the output, done — the minutes you save belong to analysis, which is where rubric points actually live. Cross-check in-text forms against the table above and the reference list is submission-ready.