I tried looking for a topic to answer this problem, but couldn't find one. Please forgive me if I missed one and this is a repeat.

But yeah, I'm having issues with finding out whether or not to post some pics. Namely, I've made a relaxing hobby of finding pics on this site that I like and coloring, shading, highlighting and texturing them. I've gotten somewhat good at it, enough to like some of my own work, and wanted to post them.

Problem being is I don't know if it's appropriate to do so. I thought of trying to contact the original authors, but the effort of contacting many artists and getting them to reply aside, I never saved the author name to each of the drawings. So I would need to also find the original work and then artist (Tried yesterday and took almost as much time trying to find the artist as it took to do all the above to their work... and still didn't find them.).

So I guess I'm asking;
1) Do I need express permission to post a colored version of someone's work? As I've seen it said here that you CAN post edits, within reason.
2) Even if I can post without permission, I would find it rude to post expecting others to fill in tags like artist name and such. What are the solutions to this, as I don't want a repeat of yesterday.

P.S. Sorry for being wordy, nervous transitioning from lurker to poster

The rules: Edits are allowed as long as the original author is credited/tagged, and as long as the image is marked as edit (simply tag edit and maybe write it into the description). If the original image is also uploaded on our page it's common courtesy to fill the parent field with the ID of the original post. That links them together and looks nicer.
Past that we will honor any takedown request by the original artist, and we greatly recommend asking the author before you edit and upload anything. Some artists react very negatively to any edits to their work.
But if you mark it as an edit you're safe from the moderation, it's not against the rules to upload edits, we just recommend being respectful to the original artist(s).

Now, to finding the artist(s), if you have the original upload saved then simply upload it to http://iqdb.harry.lu and do a reverse image search. If there's a result it will link you directly to the post in question.

The other option is, if you saved the picture from e621.net the filename will be something retarded like "1890775857d86018da8cac5f767608ae.png", anything before the period is an md5-hash, which can be searched on our server. Just use md5:1890775857d86018da8cac5f767608ae and it'll show you the post.

Once you have a post located on our server you can then use the source/artist-tag to find and contact the artist. Especially interesting is that you can click the questionmark to the left of the artist's tag to see a list of pages where the artist publishes their work.

I don't think there is anything else terribly important that you should know. If you have any other questions, or if what I wrote seems like mad rambling and doesn't make sense, then simply ask again, either here or by writing me a dmail.
It's like 2AM over here and I start to become less coherent by now.

Don't take my answer to be official, but in my opinion: if it's a color-up of another artist's work then it should only be uploaded if proper credit is given at that time. I do quite a bit of color-up myself and make sure to follow this guideline.

I also only color up art of artists who give open permission or from whom I've gotten specific written permission to do so... so can't really say what to do about your not having checked with them first.

Thanks for the response, firstly.

It's going to be a pain to find all the artist, been doing it a while. Knew what I was getting myself into down the road, but I DID kinda started doing it for personal relaxation/enjoyment/practice rather than to upload. That reverse image search will serve a BIG help though, been previously trying to use reverse Google search to vastly varying results. Didn't even know this site had one of those.

Other than that, I think I may have screwed myself on several fronts with my filing system. I don't think I kept many, if any, of the original files, and none have the original name. The image search will help with any of the pics that were in black and white, but the others (like one's with color tint) will be more of a pain.

So I guess another question of mine would be;
3) You can ask for help locating a pic on here, is there a limit to the requested pics per post?

Also, for Nyteshade, is there any common way artists give open permission (Something I could look out for so I don't have to trouble so many people)

Edit: sentence didn't make sense (Also out of it, just not 2AM)

There is no limit, if you want you can upload them to imgur or something (where they aren't listed publicly if you don't want to), and then link them here. Quite a few people frequent the forum and we generally are able to hunt down anything that was at one point or another on here.

Also, always keep the original and only edit a copy, that saves a lot of problems in almost every worst-case scenario imaginable. :V

Lamar said:
Also, for Nyteshade, is there any common way artists give open permission (Something I could look out for so I don't have to trouble so many people)

Sometimes open permission on a site like deviantart, or maybe comment responses to people saying they "enjoy seeing people color their art." Basically, if they state it publicly anywhere that they are okay with it then I treat it open season. And then I send the artist a link to my colored piece when it's done so I'm sure they know about it.

Sorry for bringing this post back up, but I've run into an issue and don't know how to proceed. Mainly, after getting over an initial delay in finding and contacting the artists (I think I'm about half way through the list), I found some bad news; one of the artist is dead.

Specifically, is seems Athus has passed away and I now don't know how to proceed. If I am to still post the work, I don't know who to contact for permission or if I need to contact anyone at all. This is, of course, if I still post it at all, as I don't know if it'd be disrespectful in any way.

p.s. forgot to ask last time, but when/if I post any of these works, do I add my name to the artist tags? I don't know if I feel 100% comfortable with that, as I didn't draw it. But I also understand that, 1) I contributed to the work and 2) the artist might not want people to think they are doing the coloring, perhaps to stop people from expecting colored works from them.

Lamar said:
p.s. forgot to ask last time, but when/if I post any of these works, do I add my name to the artist tags? I don't know if I feel 100% comfortable with that, as I didn't draw it. But I also understand that, 1) I contributed to the work and 2) the artist might not want people to think they are doing the coloring, perhaps to stop people from expecting colored works from them.

Most if not all colored edits are tagged with both the original artist and the person who did the coloring, so yes, I would do so if you upload them. Helps us keep track of your edits if you do really nice ones too.

As for the dead artist, I really don't know what to say there. If they were opposed to edits or reposting of their work and make this obvious on their profile(s), then it would obviously be disrespectful to do so when they've passed. You won't get into any legal/administrative trouble since the only person who would oppose and who has rights to the original work and can file takedowns is now gone (unless they have family/friends looking after their work as part of their wishes, or are already on the DNP list), but you may find it morally... questionable.