This question has come up on Boardgame Geek, and it becomes more relevant in light of the new Cardmaker webapp on DriveThru RPG.
The Community Use Policy's wording on image cropping only mentions product images; so some users (not me) have interpreted the wording to mean that blog images don't have this restriction, and can be cropped - it's particularly useful to do so when creating Pathfinder Adventure Card Game cards, because without cropping, the image on the card is tiny and doesn't resemble the rest of the cards in the retail game (possibly violating the requirement to present Paizo's products in a favorable light).
Any thoughts one way or the other on this issue?
I should have also mentioned "web serial images" in the discussion too. Since they aren't product images, some users (again not me) think cropping is allowed on those too.
And regarding cropping, I have not seen any instances of people creating "new" images by combining crops from two different sources - for example, giving iconics a pirate hat or holding different weapons. What I've seen is head-to-toe images of characters on a white background cropped at the waist, shoulders, or head to display them in a manner consistent with the PACG cards. The origin of the resulting cropped image can be easily identified by a reasonable person (eg. - I've seen that web serial or blog post image before).
The other scenario I've seen is full murals cropped to display a portion of the image. For example, iconic heroes might be battling a monster while villagers flee in the corner of the image, and someone decided to focus on the villager. I think that's a bit more dubious since the focal point of the image is the heroes and the monster, but I realize people interpret things differently.
Thanks, this will help the PACG community a lot.
In the interest of helping future people finding this post via search engines or Paizo.com's search functionality, my question was limited to cropping images for something the size of a U.S. Standard playing card.
Paizo does not allow modification of their community use artwork, for example, changing colors, altering proportions, or adding something to the image that wasn't originally there. If you have any doubts whether your usage is permitted, don't assume it's okay, instead open an account on Paizo.com and ask a question in the General Discussion forum just like I did.