I'm looking for advice on the legalities of using material for inspiration and reference, such as street photography that could be used to recreate a digital representation which contains more than a passing resemblance to the original photograph.
I initially thought using images found on 'royalty free' websites would be tolerated, but more often than not these images have usage fees (which begs the question what does 'royalty free' even mean?) so where do we go for our inspiration and reference sources? When is a digital painting that has been 'inspired' by someone else's photograph, a blatant copy? Where's the line?
Quite often with digital artist software we see portraits of celebrities which have clearly been copied from a photograph, or simply the photograph has been used for manipulation, such as having an oil paint filter applied. Is this not copyright theft too?
Views and opinions very welcome.
[edit] A more in-depth search using terms like 'free to use images' garnered much better results, such as Pixabay, but I'd still be interested in others' views on the subject
I initially thought using images found on 'royalty free' websites would be tolerated, but more often than not these images have usage fees (which begs the question what does 'royalty free' even mean?) so where do we go for our inspiration and reference sources? When is a digital painting that has been 'inspired' by someone else's photograph, a blatant copy? Where's the line?
Quite often with digital artist software we see portraits of celebrities which have clearly been copied from a photograph, or simply the photograph has been used for manipulation, such as having an oil paint filter applied. Is this not copyright theft too?
Views and opinions very welcome.
[edit] A more in-depth search using terms like 'free to use images' garnered much better results, such as Pixabay, but I'd still be interested in others' views on the subject