Choose what size for downloading an image

The video downloads are historical reasons. Formerly it was much more expensive to download the 4k video than the HD video. The optioon also exists with Premium assets, because high res assets are much more expensive than low res assets. 

I agree with you that many contributors simply upscale assets to death. But that is not the correct way to handle this issue. 

But you did not understand what @daniellei4510 suggested: instead of downloading, resizing, saving a copy, deleting the original, you could simply download and resize, without saving a copy. Simply overwriting the original. And to do that operation you could even automate this, so that it would work in one rush, without much user interaction. 

On a different side, storage is so cheap that the few megabytes should not m,ake an issue anymore. (I know, thge backup time will increase, and that is normally a bigger issue). But there is no need to back-up the originals.

IMHO: choosing the correct size during the download phase will offset the gains, not having to resize the assets.

I'm on an unlimited plan so credits aren't a concern for me. They already have this for the video option, you can choose to download 4k or hd. Don't get me wrong, when you need it, it's better to have higher resolution than lower resolution. I'm just suggesting some variables. Like what I said before, Adobe as put preference on AI. It's wild to me that if a user found an image of a bowl of apples, they can use the edit with ai feature in stock to change it to a bowl or oranges, but something as simple as changing the image download size is a step too far.

"It's just an annoying work around to have to download the massive image, down size it to 1k then delete the massive one"

I guess this is what I'm confused about. Why not just resize the original download and not worry about creating a duplicate first?

I understand, but isn't it simple enough to reduce the size? At any size, a buyer might have to adjust the size, crop, dimensions whatever in any case. Anyway, don't expect things to change anytime soon. 🙂

I'm not saying take away the large files, I'm just saying I know I don't need a 10,000 x 10,000 image there should be an option to downsize your download before downloading it

But that doesn't take into consideration the buyers who want large files say, for example, for print. Granted, some other sites do allow for selecting different sizes, but when I was a buyer, I paid the same number/price credits for smaller files as larger ones.