>>2119012 (Previous Bread)
Little insight on this photo which might help anons dig. A HUGE majority of candid photos of Obama during his tenure were taken by Pete Sousa (which is a significant controversy in its own right.) Photos taken by Sousa, or any of the rest of the White House photo staff, will be public domain with file assets held by either the White House Photo Department, the National Archives, or perhaps another govt. entity. In reality, this copy in the Alamy archives is simply a block of files scraped from publicly available photos and re-marketed as royalty free content by the agency. I would wager this file is almost certainly taken by Pete Sousa, as he would have been most likely to have access to personal moment's like these.
It would be very reasonable and likely to produce an outcome (but I can not do without doxing myself), for an anon to inquire at the White House or archives about requesting a high res version of that file, straight from the government. There is really no reason to deny the request, provided its made with the right agency who actually holds those assets. It might take a couple calls, but a polite and professional inquiry on the grounds of "need a copy for a book edit I'm working on" or a "freelance story I'm working on" will usually get the file or referral to who has the file in short order. Organizations like National Geographic or Life magazine often use freelance photo editors to compile blocks of editorial content, for which a photo file is usually acquired before the final edit of the publication is completed. Usually these organizations will license the rights during the final stage prior to release.
In short, the high res file for this photo is in the public domain and fairly easy to obtain, given a tiny bit of social engineering. A high res would easily clear up any question of bad photoshop. For the record, I'd be stunned if Pete let such a bad photoshop out into the wild. He had a headlock on that Obama content, and is a very savvy visual profession. It defies logic it would have escaped notice…but then again, weirder shit has happened.