How legal are deformed pictures

I am no expert on copyright law, but I am pretty sure that is still infringing on the original work.

Deforming an image like that creates a derivative work - you're still bound by copyright in that case, even if you're using it as a texture to make something different. For example, if there's a copyrighted photo of someone holding a plank of wood, and you use a scaled/zoomed image of that plank to make a wood texture for a card, you're still infringing on the copyright.

In short: Modifying or cropping an image doesn't free it from copyright.

One thing you could do is find some royalty-free image or texture library and use that for your artwork, or maybe find an artist who will do quick sketchy things for cheap, and you can paint under them in Photoshop (in multiply mode) to make it look more polished.

Mm - Unless the license allows derivative use, or it's in the public domain, I think you'd be on dodgy grounds at best without acquiring permission and potentially paying royalties on it.

Finding something which you can use without getting into potential legal trouble shouldn't be too tricky, however. Personally, I'd start here.

Standard I Am Not A Lawyer disclaimer applies.

That's moving the question from 'is it legal?' to 'is it enforceable?' isn't it?

I'd lean on the side of caution and go with public domain images and those released under appropriate creative commons, and similar, licenses, myself.

(I'm still not a lawyer, mind)

I always use stuff from Google Images. BUT....I only use it for prototyping. I think to be safe, if I were ever to publish anything (all my stuff is done simply for fun at the moment...I enjoy the journey) I would hire an artist to do the artwork for me.

For one of the pictures, I went to Google Images and typed "wormhole". There's a pretty cool image of a wormhole "funnel" with a grid and a blueish-white beam going through it. Just the other day I saw someone here using that exact same image for their Avatar on this board!

I tweaked it a bit using layers, brightness and contrast in paint.NET to really make the image pop for my cards, but still...you can tell where it came from.

There should be plenty of sources out there that are either free, or are cheap to have someone mock up for you. Art schools are probably a good bet. The students will either work for cheap (or free) so they can get a portfolio together.

Here's a quote from an email I got from a friend here at work. This seems like a good, cheap way to go, too. I hope it's helpful:

"Try this:
http://www.digitalwebbing.com

- This site has a good help wanted section. Just put in your requirements (600 DPI, Color art, at whatever size you need…get it larger so you could possibly use it for other things as well…t-shirt/poster/etc.) and how much you will pay. You could do $10+ $10 should get you some inexperienced saps just starting out but there are diamonds in the rough for sure. $50 will get you a semi-pro and $100 you’ll probably get someone known in the art world. I pay $300 - $500 for work from famous people to give you an idea…though I almost paid Ben Templesmith $1000 cause he is very popular but he got busy and I couldn’t wait.

http://www.deviantart.com

-The Help Wanted posting is bad here, but you can scan artist pages and find people you like. Then make them an offer. Usually $10-$50 is the standard there…LOTS of people willing to do commissions for cheap."