I needed a photo for a large, billboard-sized window treatment yesterday. After finding just the right photo on Shutterstock, I was unable to locate it on any stock photo sites with a high enough resolution. I checked a place called DepositPhotos and for some reason, they had the photo there at twice the resolution. I suspected they had simply upsampled the smaller photo, so I sent them a note asking about it.
Here is their reply:
At least they were honest in their reply about upsampling the photo. Unfortunately, the rest was mostly a half-truth. As they wrote, I suppose no quality would actually be lost in upsampling a photo, but not much would be gained either — even with algorithms that do a bit of edge sharpening. Passing off these upsampled files as legitimate extra-high-resolution images, to me, seems dishonest.