How to Save Image on Mac

It’s easy to save an image on a Mac. Whether you want to download your own photos from a camera, email attachments, or even memes from the internet, you’ll be able to do it quickly.

There are several ways to do it, depending on where you’ve found the image.

Ways that you can save a picture on Mac:

• Right-click and download the picture from a website
• Save the image from an email
• Take a screenshot
• Download the image from a social media app
• Download the image from a cloud service
• Copy data from an external device

In this article, I’ll explain different ways to download an image on your Mac, where to find your saved images, and how to organize them.

Before we start:

If you save a lot of images to your MacBook, your computer might fill up with duplicates—it’s easy to forget if you’ve already saved an image.

Fortunately, MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder can help you here. It can scan your Mac to find duplicate files and remove them with just a few clicks.

How to find duplicate files with MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder:

1. Download MacKeeper and follow the on-screen instructions to install it.
2. Open MacKeeper.
3. Choose Duplicates Finder from the sidebar.
4. Click Start Scan.
5. When the scan is complete, select the files you want to remove and choose Remove Selected.

How to save pictures on Mac

There’s a variety of ways you can save an image on Mac.

To save a picture on Mac:

1. Save pictures from a website.
2. Download images from emails or messages.
3. Save screenshots.
4. Save images from social media or messaging apps.
5. Download images from cloud services.
6. Save images from external devices.

1. Save pictures from the web on a MacBook

You might find a picture online that you want to download to your laptop. Perhaps you’ve found some ideas on Pinterest, or someone’s shared a pic that you want to keep. Whatever the reason, I’ll explain how to download a picture on your MacBook.

To download a picture on a MacBook from the web:

1. Open your web browser (Chrome, Safari, or similar) and find the image, right-click on the picture, or press Control while clicking.
2. Choose Save Image As.
3. Select where you want to save the image, give your file a name, then click Save.

2. Download images from emails or messages on Mac

Maybe you want to download an image someone emailed you on your Mac. Was it sent as an attachment? Simply open the email and click the Download or Save button next to your attachment. If the picture was in the email body, right-click on it and choose Save Attachment, just like you would on a webpage.

Our expert’s warning: Pictures should have a file extension like jpg or png.

To save an image on Mac from an email attachment:

1. Find the attachment in the email, and click the Download or Save button.
2. Choose where you want to save the attachment, and press Save.

3. Save screenshots on Mac

A slightly different way to save an image on a Mac is to take a screenshot. This is a snapshot of what your MacBook’s screen displays—check out our article on how to capture a screenshot on Mac.

You can use shortcuts to take quick screenshots on macOS:

• Command+Shift+3: Captures the entire screen
• Command+Shift+4: Lets you select an area of the screen to capture

Once you’ve taken a screenshot, you can edit it—you might want to crop out some sections or highlight other parts.

4. Save images from messages and social media apps

You might want to save a picture on a Mac from an app like Messenger or WhatsApp. The process might be slightly different in some apps, but generally, you’ll want to find a Download button.

To download an image on Mac from a messaging app:

1. Click on the image.
2. Then press the Download button.

Our expert’s tip: Do you want to download photos from a social media site like Instagram? If you’re using a browser, follow the instructions for saving a photo from a website.

5. Download images from cloud services

Maybe your images are saved in a cloud storage service, like iCloud. Find out how to download photos from iCloud to Mac. If you use a different service, the process will be similar—find your image and choose the Download option.

6. Save images from an external device

If you’ve got images on a camera or external flash drive, you can copy them to your MacBook.

To download a picture on a MacBook from an external device:

1. Attach your external device to your MacBook and find the folder that contains the photos. External devices are usually listed in the sidebar under Locations.
2. Select the photos you want to copy, right-click on them, and choose Copy.
3. Go to your destination folder and right-click. Choose Paste Item.

Where to find saved images on Mac

Once you’ve downloaded images, you might have another question. Where are photos stored on Mac?

If you’ve chosen a download location for your images, they will be there. You might have chosen a folder when you saved them, or maybe you put them on your Desktop. But if you can’t remember, you can find recently saved files in your Recents folder.

There are two ways to access your Recent Items.

To access your Recent Items on Mac:

1. Go to Apple menu > Recent Items.
2. In Finder, click Recents in the sidebar.

When saving photos, avoid keeping duplicates. It’s easy to save multiple copies of a picture, but that fills your storage space quickly.

MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder can help. It can scan your Mac for duplicate and similar files—allowing you to delete them with just a few clicks.

To find duplicate files with MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder:

1. Open MacKeeper and choose Duplicates Finder.
2. Click Start Scan.
3. When the scan is complete, click on the categories to see which files you want to delete. Select the files to remove, and choose Remove Selected.

How to organize saved images

There are lots of ways to organize images on your Mac—check out our article on how to organize photos on Mac.

To organize your saved images:

• Create folders to make it easier to search. You could organize them by date, event, or subject.
• Give your photos memorable names—perhaps by date and subject.
• Use tags to find photos across folders.
• Declutter regularly. Use MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder to remove identical and similar photos, and remember to delete poor-quality images.

Conclusion

It’s easy to save a picture on your Mac. Whether downloading an image from the internet, saving an email attachment, or copying photos from an external device, you should be able to save an image on a Mac in seconds.

However, you need to make sure that you’re keeping images organized—and not accidentally saving lots of identical files. MacKeeper’s Duplicates Finder can help by scanning your Mac for duplicate files and letting you remove them quickly and easily.