How to Cite an Image in APA, MLA & Chicago (Google Images, Photos & AI-Generated Images)

Key Pointers

• The format depends less on the style guide than on where the image came from. A museum painting, a Google Images result, an Instagram photo and a DALL·E output all take different treatment inside the same style.
• APA always puts a medium description in square brackets. MLA never uses brackets. Chicago sits between the two and publishes less guidance on images than either.
• An image reproduced inside your paper is a figure, and a figure caption is not the same thing as a reference-list entry. Several styles want both.
• APA publishes a template for museum artwork but not for a general image found on a website. Where a style is silent, this guide says so rather than inventing a format.
• AI-generated images are the least settled area. MLA publishes a caption example, APA says to note AI use in the figure note, and Chicago guidance varies between university libraries on whether a bibliography entry belongs at all.
• Citing the image is separate from having permission to reproduce it. Attribution is not a copyright licence.

Before you can cite an image, you need five things

Most people get stuck on this question because they’re missing information, not because the format is hard.

Every style wants some version of the same five elements: who made the image, what it’s called, when it was made, what kind of thing it is, and where you found it. If you can answer those five, the format falls into place quickly in any of the three styles.

The sticking point is usually the last one. “I found it on Google Images” is not a source. Google Images is a search index, not a publisher, and no style guide has a template for it. What you need is the page the image actually lives on, which means clicking through to the original site before you cite anything.

That one habit solves most image citation problems.

If you want the underlying logic of what a citation is doing in the first place, it’s worth reading our explainer on what a citation is in writing.

How to cite an image in APA 7

APA treats images as artwork, and its published template covers museum works: paintings, sculptures, photographs, prints, drawings, digital art, crafts and installations all take the same shape.

The structure runs: artist surname and initials, year in parentheses, italicised title, a medium description in square brackets, then the museum and its location, then a link if one exists.

APA’s own published example: van Gogh, V. (1889). The starry night [Painting]. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, United States. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/vincent-van-gogh-the-starry-night-1889/

In-text, that becomes (van Gogh, 1889) parenthetically or van Gogh (1889) in narrative form.

The bracket is the part people miss. APA’s rule is that you always include a description of the medium or format in square brackets after the title, and that the description is flexible: [Painting] works, and so does [Oil painting] or [Oil on canvas]. If the work has no title, the bracketed description takes the title’s place.

Worth flagging honestly: APA does not publish a template for a general image found on a website. Its artwork page covers museum works and museum websites. For a photo on a blog or a news site, most writers adapt the artwork format by replacing the museum with the site name, which is a reasonable adaptation rather than a published rule. If your institution has a preferred approach, follow that instead.

How to cite an image in MLA 9

MLA builds every entry from the same core elements, so image entries look like other MLA entries rather than a special case. There are no square brackets anywhere.

What changes is whether you saw the image online or in person.

Viewed online, MLA’s published example: Bearden, Romare. The Train. 1975. MOMA, http://www.moma.org/collection/works/65232?locale=en.

MLA’s rule here is direct: if you viewed the image online, provide the name of the website containing the image and the URL.

Viewed in person, MLA’s published example: Cameron, Julia Margaret. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. 1866, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

For an untitled image, MLA puts a plain description where the title would go, with no brackets and no italics: Karasik, Paul. Cartoon. The New Yorker, 14 Apr. 2008, p. 49.

That last example is the clearest illustration of the difference between the two systems. APA would bracket the description. MLA simply writes it.

How to cite an image in Chicago style

Chicago is the thinnest of the three on images, and it’s worth saying plainly: the manual doesn’t give extensive direction here, which is why university library guides vary.

Across five current library guides checked for this piece, the agreed structure is consistent even where the details differ.

Bibliography: artist surname, given name. Italic title. Date. Medium. Location, meaning institution and city. URL last.

Footnote: given name first, then italic title, date, medium, location, URL, separated by commas.

Shortened note: surname, then a short italic title.

A worked example in the agreed shape: Lichtenstein, Roy. Drowning Girl. 1963. Oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Museum of Modern Art, New York. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/80249

Where the guides diverge is in the optional elements. Some include the accession or object number, some include dimensions, and the element order shifts for images found on websites rather than in collections. If your department has a house style, that outranks anything here.

Medium placement is the one thing all five agree on: it comes after the date and before the location.

How to cite an image by where you found it

This is the part most guides skip, and it’s where the real confusion lives. Below, the same question answered by source rather than by style.

How to cite an image from Google Images or a website

Don’t cite Google. Click through to the page hosting the image, then cite that page’s details.

In MLA this is the “viewed online” form: creator, italic title, date, then the website name in italics and the URL. In Chicago, it’s the standard image shape with the site name in the location slot. In APA, you’re adapting the artwork template, since no website-image template is published.

If the image has no visible creator, use the organisation that published it. If it has no title, describe it.

For a page with no named author at all, our guide to citing a website without an author covers the fallback order in each style.

A work of art you saw in a museum

This is the best-documented case in all three styles, and the templates above cover it directly. The only decision is whether you viewed it in person or online, which changes whether you end with a location or a URL.

MLA draws that line most clearly: physical location if you saw it in person, website and URL if you didn’t.

A photo from Instagram, X or another social platform

Treat the account holder as the creator and the post’s caption or a short description as the title. The platform becomes the container in MLA, the site name in Chicago, and the source element in APA with a bracketed description such as [Photograph].

Include the exact post date, not the date you looked at it.

Memes and GIFs follow closely related rules, and we’ve broken those out separately in how to cite a meme or GIF.

A photograph you took yourself

Your own photograph usually doesn’t belong in the reference list, because there’s nothing for a reader to retrieve. What it needs instead is a figure caption identifying it as yours.

A line such as “Figure 3. Photograph by the author, March 2026” does the job in all three styles. Check your institution’s thesis formatting rules, which often specify exact wording.

An AI-generated image from Midjourney, DALL·E or ChatGPT

This is the least settled area in all three styles, so treat anything you read about it, including this, as provisional.

MLA publishes a caption example built from the prompt, the tool, the version, the company and the date, and recommends against treating the AI tool as an author. APA’s current generative AI guidance says that when you use AI to create figures or other visual representations, you indicate that in the figure note. Chicago guidance differs by library: some say no bibliography entry is appropriate for an AI image, others offer an optional one.

What all of them agree on is that the prompt belongs in the record. Whatever format you land on, include the text you typed, the tool and version, and the date you generated it.

For the text equivalent of this problem, we’ve covered how to cite ChatGPT in more depth.

Figure captions are not reference-list entries

This trips people up constantly, and it’s worth separating cleanly.

A reference-list entry tells a reader how to find the image themselves. A figure caption sits with the image inside your document and tells the reader what they’re looking at. An image reproduced in your paper frequently needs both.

APA is the most prescriptive. The figure number goes above the image in bold. The title sits one line below it, in italic title case. Underneath the image comes a note, and that note carries the copyright attribution when the image came from somewhere else.

APA’s published sample attribution for a reprinted figure runs in the shape: From “[Article title],” by [Author], [year], [Journal], [volume](issue), p. [page] ([URL]). Copyright [year] by [copyright holder]. For a public-domain source, APA’s sample ends simply with “In the public domain.”

Chicago and MLA are looser. Chicago library guides agree there is no set format for captions in the 18th edition, with the usual practice being a figure number, then the citation in footnote form, placed directly below the image.

One thing worth separating from all of this: citing an image is not the same as having permission to publish it. Attribution satisfies academic honesty. Copyright is a different question, and for anything you intend to publish rather than submit, check the licence.

Which images don’t need a citation?

Simply put, not so many people as you would think and the styles have relatively little to say about it.

Any visuals created by yourself should be captioned but no reference needed. You are not required to cite purely decorative elements such as a frame or any other visually descriptive landscape presented to the readers by your university.

The only exception might be public domain images. In case some of the images provided by you happens to be in public domain, just remember that they have to be cited and referenced. The actual description of the term ‘public domain’ is that you may use this image, however, it does not mean that all are aware of its origin.

Another thing to keep in mind while discussing attribution and citation is the area of clipart and stock images. As for the images in question, the best option would be to refer to one’s institution for a piece of advice or to refer to them in case nothing else is said abouttributor’s responsibility for this image.

Getting the entry built

Once you’ve identified the source page, the fields an image citation needs are mostly the fields a web page citation needs: creator, title, site, date and URL. The style-specific work is adding the medium and getting the punctuation right.

That’s the part worth automating.

Build the base entry with Quetext’s citation generator, which outputs APA, MLA and Chicago from a URL or manual fields, then add the medium description and any bracketed element your style requires.

One caveat, stated plainly: the generator doesn’t currently have a dedicated image or artwork source type. Use the webpage fields for web-hosted images and adjust the result against the templates above.

If your paper reuses visuals, captions or blocks of text from other sources, it’s worth running the whole document through a plagiarism checker before submission to catch anything you’ve quoted without attributing.

For the broader mechanics of reference lists across source types, see our guide to bibliographic citations. If you’re working with correspondence or archival material alongside images, citing a letter follows a related pattern.

The short version

First and foremost, find the original source of an image, because although “Google Images” is helpful, it is not always the correct source.

Make sure to verify exactly how the image should be cited according to where it was published rather than the subject matter. Keep in mind that in APA style the type of medium matters, while in MLA it does not; Chicago is even less informative than either of these styles, meaning that institutional guidelines take priority.

Additionally, when dealing with AI-generated images, keep records of prompts as most citation styles agree on this despite the fact that they do not agree on anything else. Generate your image citation free with the Quetext Citation Generator

Frequently asked questions

How do you cite an image in MLA?

If you accessed the work on the internet, the Modern Language Association citation format requires the following sequence: creator’s name, title of the work in italics, year it was produced, and the name of the website in italics followed the web address. In a case in which the work was viewed on-site, the citation should consist of the same pattern but in the last part of the citation name of the location where you were able to view the work has to be provided.

• Name of creator, title, and the date first.
• Title in italics instead of just giving the title in normal letters.
• No brackets are needed when stating the medium of creation.

How do you cite an image in APA?

According to APA, an image is equivalent to a piece of visual art. Cite the image author’s last name and initials, the year of release in parentheses, the picture’s title in italics, and the medium in square brackets. Provide the museum name where the image is displayed; link to the online art gallery. For example, van Gogh, V. (1889). The starry night [Painting]. The Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA.

• Medium in square brackets must be included
• Medium can be general or specific
• Title is not required if the image is untitled

What images do not need to be cited?

Less than what people generally think. If you have visualized an image previously, it must be captioned, but as a rule, you need to also reference the image. Non-informational visuals are generally excluded from the requirement. Public domain materials must also be attributed, and APA uses an example of a figure that has an attribution note with the phrase “In the public domain.” When in doubt, cite it.

• Your own work requires a caption.
• However, public domain still requires attribution.
• Decorative graphics are generally exempt.

How do I cite an image I found on Google Images?

You do not cite Google as your source. Google Images is only a directory of images and not a publisher; no style guide lists Google Images as a source. You need to click to the actual page where the image is hosted and cite the creator and title or description of the artwork, the title of the publishing site, and the URL. If there are multiple sites where the image has appeared, it is best to trace to the source of the image wherever possible.

• Don’t cite Google Images
• Visit the hosting site
• Support your statements with links

How do you cite an AI-generated image?

Since the guidelines are still emerging, you should begin with your institution. MLA shows an example caption that includes the prompt, the tool, version and date, and explicitly states to not list the AI as the author. APA states to mention the use of AI in the figure note if AI made the graphic. Chicago rules vary by institution. All methods say that the prompt should be in the record.

• Have the exact prompt saved
• List the name of the tool and version
• Be ready to alter the rules

Do I need a citation and a caption for the same image?

Indeed, as a rule, it could be said that there is a great deal of difference between the two jobs, which shows that reference-list entry is one for locating and help in finding of the original source. Caption is even easier to translate as it includes the image and all necessary copyright information, as well as provides the necessary attribution to the source. The strictest layout is demanded by APA, which calls for the use of bold figure) number, italicized name and information below the image.

• The entry allows for easy retrieval
• The caption does a great job of helping readers locate the picture
• APA provides the exact requirements

Does citing an image give me permission to use it?

No, and this is a common and costly mistake. Citation addresses the issue of academic integrity as it entails attribution to the author of the work. Copyright rules govern whether or not one may reproduce the work, but it is an independent issue. In the case of coursework submitted to a community institution, normally citation will be enough. When it comes to publications, it is important to check the licence in advance.

• Citation and copyright issues are different
• Coursework is not the same as publication
• Be sure to check the copyright proof before publishing