How we source images
Where every picture on this site comes from, what we are allowed to do to it, and how to reach us if we have got one wrong.
Every image on bitcritiq has a licence recorded against it before it is published. Not “we checked at the time” — an actual record, stored alongside the original file, naming the source, the photographer, the licence and the page where that licence is stated.
Our publishing tool refuses to publish an article whose image has no such record. That is not a policy we intend to follow; it is one the software enforces.
Where images come from
Our own photographs. Anything we have physically handled. These are ours and we say so.
Free-licence libraries — Pexels, Unsplash, Wikimedia Commons. Used under their stated licences, which we record per file, and credited even where the licence does not require it.
Manufacturer press assets, used editorially with the brand’s permission and credited to them.
Original illustration and charts made by us, always labelled as illustration, never as a photograph of a thing.
What we do to them
Format and size, always: every image is converted to modern formats and generated at two sizes, because a 3MB photograph is a worse experience than a good one.
Colour and crop, only where the licence allows it. Images we may not alter — manufacturer press assets, and anything under a share-alike licence — are fitted to the layout rather than cropped, and are not colour-graded. The framing you see is the framing that was published.
Our own mark appears in the corner of an image frame. It is drawn by the page, never composited into the file, so the stored photograph remains exactly what the photographer or manufacturer released. It fades away when you hover, because on a page recommending a product you should always be one gesture from the picture as published.
What we do not do
We do not take product photographs from retailer listings, including Amazon. We do not use images from other publications’ reviews. We do not generate pictures of real products with AI — on a page carrying a buying recommendation that is fabricating evidence, and no disclosure label makes it acceptable.
If we have got one wrong
We would rather hear from you than not.
If you own an image on this site and believe we are using it without the right to, write to robin@bitcritiq.com with the page and the image. We will take it down while we check, not after — and if we were wrong, it stays down and we correct the record.
That offer is not a substitute for permission and we do not treat it as one. It exists because licence records can be wrong, uploaders to free-licence sites sometimes claim work that is not theirs, and we would rather be correctable than confident.