Below code in ssim.c from IQA library forces input pictures to be downscaled and SSIM being computed on downscaled images instead of originals:
const struct iqa_ssim_args *args = 0; /* 0 for default */
int gaussian = 0; /* 0 for 8x8 square window - default */
/* initialize algorithm parameters */
scale = _max( 1, _round( (float)_min(w,h) / 256.0f ) );
if (args) {
scale must be set to 1 to compute SSIM using original resolutions.