senpai wrote:
No, You can't modify a "fair use" image.
Disagree. U. S. rulings have allowed for parody. You may wish to crop an image to zoom into a detail that is important to your article. You may want to do an overlay to show the similarities between two people. You may want to do colour separations. I could probably find other legitimate modifications.
Modifications have more to do with moral rights than copyrights in the strict sense. That aspect of the law is not particularly developed in the U. S.
Ec