Image Credits and Usage Information

Image credits identify who created an image and the terms attached to its use. Our image policy distinguishes documentary photographs from generated illustrations and requires a separate credit record for each published image.

Photographs and illustrations

Our policy requires real photographs for named cheeses, producers, dairies, farms, maturing cellars, cheesemongers, brands, packaging, people and places. Each photograph requires a recorded licence or permission, with the evidence kept internally. Historical entries and products subject to jurisdiction specific restrictions require authentic licensed documentary or archival images.

Generated images are restricted to generic dishes and explanatory diagrams and must be labelled as generated. Illustrations of dishes use unnamed cheese styles. Diagrams explain a process or relationship; technical and safety critical diagrams require specialist checking.

Image credits and licence records

Each published image needs a credit entry containing:

• The page title and an image description.
• The creator and copyright holder, where applicable.
• The source and the licence name, version and link, or the wording required by the permission.
• Any required attribution and a note of alterations, such as cropping.
• For generated illustrations, a clear generated image label.

[TO CONFIRM: insert the image credit register, with verified entries for every published image.]

Credit wording must follow the relevant licence or permission. In UK guidance, the Intellectual Property Office explains that copyright usually protects photographs and illustrations, and that permission is generally needed to copy or share them unless an exception applies or copyright has expired.[1]

Reusing an image

Before reusing an image, check its individual credit and licence. GOV.UK guidance explains that a licence can limit use to particular purposes, periods or places, and that Creative Commons terms must be checked for the intended use.[2]

A credit alone does not establish permission to reproduce an image. If no licence, applicable exception or expiry of copyright permits your proposed use, seek permission from the relevant rights holder.[1][2]

Questions or credit corrections

To query a credit or report a rights concern, provide the page address, a description of the image, the correction requested and any supporting rights information.

[TO CONFIRM: contact route for image permissions and credit corrections.]

Read Editorial Policy, available now, for the site's wider editorial standards.

Sources

1. Intellectual Property Office. Copyright notice: digital images, photographs and the internet. Updated 4 January 2021. Sections “Copyright in images and photographs”, “Is permission always required to copy or use an image?” and “I want to use images I found on the web”.
   Read at gov.uk

2. GOV.UK. Using somebody else's intellectual property: Copyright. Undated web guidance, accessed November 2026. Sections “Licensing”, “Limited use” and “Creative Commons licence”.
   Read at gov.uk

Last checked: November 2026

Last checked November 2026.