Advice please

[Susan Strict]

Not incorrect.

I suggest you look at the relevant legislation, for example, the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988 in the UK. The US legislation is marginally different, but the same rules apply. But yes, I omitted to mention there is a time limit - 70 years in the case of a photo or artwork, and that's 70 years from when the original copyright owner, the photographer or artist, dies, not 70 years from when the work was created. Copyright is passed to heirsd and successor along with the rest of an artist or photographer's estate. The copyright ownership may belong to a company or business if the item was created during working hours while employed, and/or in the course of the creator's work as an employee.

"Fair Usage" doesn't apply in a case like this. It simply allows such things as linking to web sites and art/pictures/articles within them and might, in certain circumstances, allow implied permission to use a copyright item to stand - meaning that if you freely allowed an item to be used without notifying people you knew were in breach of copyright (not necessarily taking any action other than notifying them) then you probably can't later claim all the rights to restrict the usage of the item you would otherwise have had. Also, in some cases, where a copyright holder makes an item freely available to the public without noting that it's copyright, he/she can expect the public to use it for limited non-commercial purposes. It also allows abstracts of pieces of writing, low resolution artwork and similar to be used by organisations such as news agencies and those supplying information to the public, whether or not the usage is commercial and when it is to support, for example, other work that is in the public interest or purely for information AND dosn't provide the copyright item in its full, usable state. You could, for example, quote a few paragraphs from a book or an article on a web site or forum IF you acknowledged the original source and if you were writing an article about that subject, and that would be "fair usage", or add a small, low resolution copy of a photo to a factual article providing public information about a particular subject IF the photo was relevant and IF the photo was not produced in its original clarity - that too may be "fair usage". It's NEVER fair usage if, in the case of a picture, the copyright owner is selling copies of the picture either directly or by means of a member-only website or similar, and you use it to make money or to promote your own interests.
It most certainly doesn't allow anyone to incorporate pictures to illustrate their own piece of fiction without permission from the owner of the copyright, and it doesn't allow modification and then publication of existing copyright items (e.g. editing pictures) except in certain cases of pieces of writing (e.g. summarising - but NOT changing).

[janmb]

Whether Fair Use applies here is very much not clear, and certainly not a definitely "no" either like you seem to think. Opinion, not fact.

In fact, fair use is intended for amongst other things, precisely what the OP describes: Reuse of otherwise copyrighted material as a minority part of new, different creative content, not competing with the original use and value of the original work.

Another common use of the Fair Use laws, not directly relevant here, is the citation right media like newspapers etc use, where they can in fact use copyrighted material in larger scale than anyone else perfectly legally under the context of news coverage.

But again, no point arguing about this. The point is you said there are no exceptions. I pointed out that there are, but not that they necessarily are applicable in this case.

And again, whether or not this would be covered by Fair Use is really not down to your or mine opinion. The sole opinion that matters for what goes and doesn't go on this site is that of seraph.