New Rule: Anyone who takes a stock photo and does virtually nothing more than use a few filters on it and upload it to the photography section of an art community as if it were their own–even if they do credit the source–ought to be horsewhipped, not to mention strapped to a chair to learn where the stuff should go (the photo manipulation section…or better yet, off the servers!).

I found a gallery at deviantart, by way of humble voice, that contained three stock photos (two from the same account) with not much more done to them than: 1) contrast adjustments; 2) application of blur filter; 3) light texturizing; 4) cropping…in the PHOTOGRAPHY section (”Emotive Portraits” to be precise). Yeah, he credits the stock artists; but. you don’t put manipulated photography (by “manipulated”, in this case, I mean “stuff you can’t do in a darkroom”) taken by someone else in the photography section of your own account! You put it in the Photo Manipulation section where it belongs. Or, in this case, since so very little was done, they shouldn’t even be in the gallery, period.

In a weird way, even though it is stock photography, and the stock artists were still credited, it could almost constitute as ripping–not a good thing.