Are my large-sized images gone forever?

I recently discovered that a lost media page that I have contributed to has had some image files that I uploaded to it vandalised. In what was seemingly a misguided attempt to be helpful, a different user edited the images that I uploaded using some kind of “cleaning” software that actually drastically reduced the images’ file size and made the images look noticeably low-res. I noticed also that the original versions of these images; the ones that I uploaded, no longer existed on the LMW. This made it look as though the user who badly edited my images was the original uploader of those images. When I tried to simply re-upload my original images, it was only then that I discovered that the website no longer allows image uploads that are larger than 2MB. The original images that I uploaded were of a larger file size than this, so they cannot be re-uploaded at those sizes at all.


I think that it is unfair that the large-sized images that I uploaded, and which came from sources that I paid for with actual money, are now permanently gone from the LMW because of the ignorant actions of someone who did not understand what they were doing. The fact that the website now credits that person as being the original uploader of those images adds insult to injury. Is my only option now to re-upload my original images at a file size of no more than the vastly shrunken 2MB?