[quote=@BrokenPromise]
<Snipped quote by Orpheus>

This is not the first time I've seen a comment like this, But I still don't understand it. I know some artists would frown upon someone taking their work and editing it. But those same artists are usually rather adamant about having their work posted anywhere by someone that isn't them. I'm genuinely curious where the extra harm comes from.

[/quote]

So I used to help out on a graphics forum and occasionally we would have the odd person that would use an image where the original artist would show up and complain about the edits. After all this time — talking like 7 or 8 years of seeing images being tampered with — I have yet to see anyone cop any serious consequences. The images aren't being sold and they are only being used as character inspirations for a hobby writing site.

But really, if anyone did show up here claiming their artwork was stolen then they really don't have much to do in their life. They're not going to honestly get money out of the user, moderators can't exactly edit posts to remove the images, and if they start harassing users we'll refer them to the rules. It's their choice to put the image up on the web without watermarks and imagery locks (see deviantART, Shutterstock, and iStock), so until they do that people will keep on editing images for their make-believe characters 'til the end of time.