Can I remove the watermark when uploading a work without affecting the artist's signature, or should the art remain the same as in the source?
Posted under General
This site is not intended to be a repository or forum where edited artwork is discussed or shared. Disregarding that such edits are seen as disrespectful by some artists, it is also against the upload rules. Please refrain from uploading third-party edits.
We want the original image whenever possible. We do acknowledge that there are times when only an edited version is available, so uploading them may sometimes be permitted depending on what kind of edit it is (see help:upload rules for more specific details). However, you should not apply these edits yourself, since that means you have a less edited version you could be uploading instead. If someone wants a decensored version of an image, they can download it from here and do it themself.
The only cases I know of that you can edit the image yourself is if there's a lot of extra content not part of the actual image that needs to be cropped out (topic #26088), you need to change the aspect ratio (topic #33767), or if a reference inset contains forbidden content (comment #2533308), but these are all exceptional circumstances and should not be treated as the norm. In short, don't edit the images yourself unless you have no other choice.