Altered not Stolen

Live trace is an Adobe Illustrator feature which enables a user to take a pixel based image and convert it into a line based image. 

The images here show a quick example of what Adobe Illustrator can do to the same image. After it is converted to line art each shape can be tweaked and simplified. 

Back when  I was starting out in the design field it was a stand alone program called Streamline.  Using it was extremely helpful to convert logo ideas that my boss had scribbled onto a napkin from lunch.

It seems that there are mixed opinions across forums and discussion sites. Although I bet many of the people who use livetrace would not admit to using it in their artwork as it is generally looked down on as a way to easily ripoff an image.

Flickr discussion on LiveTrace

Seems like most the users on Flickr are using LiveTrace to tweak their own photographs or scanned in drawings. 

 Threadless.com: LiveTrace OK vs. not OK?

A discussion on LiveTrace morality on a print-your-own-tshirt site.

The general thought is that it must be "changed enought to make it your own"

Dilbert Blog on copyright

A pretty short and honest post by the Dilbert comic creator. The comments following are range severely, quite interesting.

Copyright.gov 

This explains what the creators rights are and a bit about manipulation.


UPDATE:
I thought this was an interesting comment on the dilbert blog.