Ideas
Thanks so much for explaining, that makes a lot more sense now!
Could the sudden drop in image quality of photos have to do with the same root cause, that the higher quality texture maybe got deleted and switched for the lowest quality version of the photo?
https://forums.ea.com/idea/the-sims-4-bug-reports-en/in-game-photos-have-become-blurry-as-if-compressed/12512904
I wonder if mermaids that after some time lose their tail is also a texture that got optimized like this and deleted? https://forums.ea.com/idea/the-sims-4-bug-reports-en/il-mermaid-tail-is-invisible/11936742
Photo resolution got nerfed a few months ago, but yes now Paint By Reference images are similarly nerfed to 1/3rd of the resolution they used to be after this last patch that super-broke all the custom image saving routines.
They're breaking one of the most interesting mechanics of the game here. Even when they manage to fix saving photos and paintings, the decision to force them all to very low resolution kills the appeal to even use it. EA_Solaire give us back the option to have higher resolution images, make it an OPTION and by default leave it at your new terrible low res, let us use this feature like we used to before you all started wrecking it last year!