legality and photoshops
 

if you photoshop an image and create a new image, you have rights to display it without a problem?

100% depends upon if you have paid adobe for a licensed version of PS...

If so, good to go, but if were to D/L PS from PB - Not so simple

not if the original license the image was sold under doesn't allow it.

you see no front/back covers on licenses sometimes, I remember years back, some adult content used to be sold where you you only use a certain amount of the images for banners/tours.

Only if you purchased the image you are chopping.

Not unless you own the images you are chopping.

see i do and would in fact own the original image, however, lets say for sake of example I took a picture of the night sky... could I then photoshop a space shuttle with obama riding it across sky?

terrible example but I would clearly take a photo of nasa space shuttle and obama and chop it, how legal?

i know bad example.

Derivative work.

You don't have to own the original image. You have to photochop the original image so much that it becomes a new piece of work. To quote "A work must pass a threshold of originality in order to be copyrightable." - What it means by be copyrightable is that it is a new work and is then owned by the "photochopper".

The question is, at what point and how much photochopping passes the threshold. Which there is no actual clear line in written law.

Here is a good wikipedia page on "Threshold of Originality" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

My understanding is that using any part of an unlicensed image would be copyright infringement, no matter how small the part you use. If you took the image yourself the only problem is product/brand copyright.

For example if your picture is of a product that has copyright on the design then you still can't use that image for commercial gain. You can't (or at least couldn't) upload images for sale on iStock of apple (and other) products for this reason.