Answer 06 of 12
Do flower stock photos from this site need attribution?
No credit is required for any commercial use. Where a credit is still a good idea, and how to write one that is actually useful.
No. Attribution is not required for any use permitted by the licence. You do not need a credit line on packaging, in an advertisement, on a website, in a book, or anywhere else.
That is a deliberate choice. Requiring credit on a photograph that will appear on a shampoo bottle is a rule nobody can comply with, and a licence with rules nobody complies with is worse than no rule.
Where a credit still helps you
Three situations where writing one is worth the effort, for your sake rather than ours.
Editorial layouts. House style in most publications is to credit every photograph. Following it keeps your picture desk happy and makes the page look finished.
Exhibition and interior prints. A caption card that names the subject reads as care. For botanical work, the species name is usually more interesting to the viewer than the photographer's name.
Internal asset tracking. The most useful credit you will ever write is the one nobody sees. Put the asset id in the layout file, the DAM record or the print job notes. When somebody asks in eighteen months whether the peony on the box is cleared, the answer takes ten seconds instead of an afternoon.
How to write one
If you do credit, keep it short and factual:
Peony 'Sarah Bernhardt' — flowerstockphotos.online
Naming the site is optional. Naming the plant is the part your reader might actually want.
What you may not do with a credit
A credit does not extend the licence. Adding a line that names the source does not turn a prohibited use into a permitted one, does not substitute for buying a licence, and does not create a right to redistribute the file.
Similarly, please do not imply endorsement. Using a photograph from this catalogue does not mean this site has approved, checked or is associated with your product, campaign or claim, and a credit worded to suggest otherwise is not acceptable.
Editorial and factual accuracy
If you caption a photograph with a species name, use the one on the image page. Botanical names in the catalogue are recorded from the source of the material where that was documented, and left off where it was not. If an image page gives no species, do not invent one for the caption; a wrong Latin binomial in print is the kind of error that gets letters.