SV can be criticized for many thing, but most of them, I've learned to live with, and sales seem to be increasing anyway. There's one thing however, that I find so outright stupid, from a photographer's, a designer's as well as from SV's view, that I feel something should be done:
Medium resolution at SV is 1600x1200 pixels, which is around 2MP. Very small, and not enough for a good quality, full page print. Large resolution is 3000x2300 pixels, which is just under 7MP.
That means, that images from 6MP cameras, and there are lots of them about, some of them of very high quality, which would normally print very well full page (A4 format), are reduced to the measly 2MP size (or at least, that is how it looks to the customers).
An obvious result must be that designers fail to download images that may or may not be large enough, but since the designer can't know that, it's safer to go somewhere else. In the end, all involved lose. The photographer, because he loses a sale, SV likewise, and the designer, because he has to search further for a usable photo.
I tried to take this up with SV support around 6 months ago, but to me, it seemed like they didn't understand what I was saying. Does anybody else have thoughts around this?