She has been overseas for over a year so I am sure she does not have the originals. Disappointing as we went to the Apple store and spoke to them about this before she left and there was no mention of the reduction in quality.
Check the pixel sizes of the photos you saved. You can see it in the Info panel. It will probably be sufficient for most purposes, but just not the original highest quality.
See this link: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202786
iCloud Photo Sharing supports JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and most RAW photo formats. When shared, photos taken with standard point-and-shoot cameras, SLR cameras, or iOS devices will have up to 2048 pixels on the long edge. Panoramic photos can be up to 5400 pixels wide.
iCloud Photo Sharing supports both MP4 and QuickTime video file types, and H.264 and MPEG-4 Video file formats. Videos can be up to 5 minutes in length and are delivered at up to 720p resolution.
If this does not suffice, she could put new photos into her Dropbox for you to download or send them by Mail at the original size.