Alain Gomez said:
What about photoshopped work? How photoshopped does something have to be before it becomes your own?
I AM NOT A LAWYER SO TAKE THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT:
First something I'm pretty darned sure of -- just doing a little photoshopping to disguise where something came from does not make it yours. Just don't do it.
There is a blurrier line as you get farther and farther from the original -- if you take a copyrighted picture of a dozen people and copy the lamppost from the background, is that fair use? (And if it isn't, will anybody notice?) I can't tell you.
One thing I can say is that if you take an original image -- drawing or photo -- and use it as a reference for a painting (no copy an paste, no Photoship -- you hand draw or paint it) you can still get into trouble if you imitate the original in too many ways. For instance, you know that famous "HOPE" poster of Obama? The artist who painted that got into trouble. He used a press photo as a model for it.
Here's the kicker: The issue in the court of law wasn't that he used the photo, but that he copied the whole photo. In his legal defense, he claimed that he had used a part of another image taken right around the same time -- one with a lot of people in it. However, that was proven to be untrue, because that photo didn't match the artwork.
The question is, if it were proven that he had used the other photo, would he have been okay? Not necessarily. There probably would have been a lengthy case to sort that out. (And remember, he was NOT accused of photoshopping the image. He painted it by hand.)
IMHO, don't mess with it.
Camille