Is Attribution Required, and When Might You Credit Anyway?

No. Attribution is not required. You can place these 4K PNGs in a client deck, a mockup or a print piece without a credit line. The license says thanks are welcome and names are not a condition of use. If a stakeholder asks "do we have to credit," the accurate answer is no.

You might credit anyway. That is courtesy, not compliance. Courtesy has a place on a case-study page, in a conference talk, or in an internal moodboard where people will ask "where is this from" twelve times. It does not have a place as a legal footer on a product billboard unless the client wants that story.

Legal optional versus social useful

Required attribution is a license clause. Creative Commons BY is the version most people have in their heads. This archive is not that. Do not add "Image: Microstock Mikhail / CC BY" because it feels safer. A fake clause teaches the next designer the wrong rule and can conflict with a client's brand rules that forbid third-party marks on packaging.

Optional credit is a sentence you choose. Useful times:

• A public case study where you list tools and sources. One line next to "type: IBM Plex" is enough.
• A student or conference slide where the audience will hunt the source. Put the URL on the last slide, not over the plate.
• An internal brand server, so the next team can verify the file without Slack archaeology.
• A moment when the client asked, in writing, to credit sources. Then you credit, because they asked, not because the file demanded it.

Skip credit when it fights the job. Packaging faces, paid social, and most sales-title slides have no room for a source URL. The license already allowed that silence.

If you do credit, decide who you are thanking. This site hosts the stills. Many designs also exist as an animated version at Unique Live Wallpaper. The wording page is for that courtesy line. Do not invent a joint copyright line that names you as co-author of the plate.

Never make credit look like an endorsement. "Used with permission from" is the wrong phrase here; you did not negotiate a permission email. "Background plate from microstock-mikhail.com" is factual. "Official art of Unique Live Wallpaper" is a claim you cannot make on a client product.

How to credit without cluttering the deliverable

Keep legal and courtesy in different places.

• On the deliverable: nothing, unless the client wants a visible line.
• In the job folder readme: the page URL, the download date, the filename you stored as slug-3840x2160-srgb.png.
• In the slide notes, not on the slide: a single URL for the curious presenter.
• On a website footer or colophon: a text link. If you also mention the motion version, use a rel="nofollow noopener" style link to Unique Live Wallpaper, which this site already does in Markdown.

Do not watermark the master. A "preview only" stamp belongs on 01_preview, never on 02_original. Watermarking the 4K PNG and then sending it is how print vendors output a stamp at 300 dpi.

Do not hide a URL in IPTC as a substitute for a decision. Metadata gets stripped, or it survives into a place the client did not want. If you need a paper trail, the readme and a dated PDF of the license page are the trail. Stripping metadata is a separate, sometimes correct, step before a paranoid client intake.

Agencies sometimes have a "list all stock" exhibit in the contract. List this file as a free commercial still from this domain, attribution not required, original archived. That exhibit is procurement, not a credit on the poster.

If a stock-site habit makes you nervous, read the license again and the agency-versus-archive note. There is no SKU, no seat count, and no mandatory byline. Nervousness is not a clause.

When a legal team still wants a letter, send them the URL and offer a screenshot of the license page dated in the job folder. Do not draft a custom license. You are not the licensor's lawyer and this page is not one either.

Browse the archive and use the files. Credit when it helps the next human. Skip it when the layout cannot carry it. Both choices are allowed.