Whether you are putting together a presentation for the office, preparing a project for school, or saving your favorite photos from a friend's Facebook page, it's easy to save images on a Mac computer.
In fact, there are three easy ways to save an image on a Mac, each of which has its own benefits.
Once you know how, you can save any image to your Mac, whether it's from a website, a social media platform, or even a PDF that is supposed to be locked against saving.
Here are the three best ways to save images on Macs.
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How to save an image on a Mac computer
Right click to save an image on a Mac
For most images, this is the best way to save them on a Mac, as it offers you the most control. Remember that using two fingers to tap on the track pad is the same as right clicking on a Mac. And if you're using a mouse with no separate right click, you can hold the Control button on your keyboard as you click to activate a right click.
1. Right click on the image, then select "Save Image As…" from the dropdown menu.
2. Enter the file name you want to use for the selected image, and choose where the file will be saved.
3. Click the blue "Save" button.
Drag-and-drop to save an image on Mac
Dragging is the quickest and simplest way to save an image on a Mac, but it offers less control than right clicking, as you can't name the file.
1. Left click and hold on the image to be saved.
2. Drag it to its chosen destination, which can be the desktop, a folder on the desktop, an open folder, or even right into a Word or Pages (or similar) document.
3. When a green circle with a "+" symbol appears, release the image to drop it into its new location.
Screen capture to save an image on Mac
A screen capture on a Mac — also known as a screenshot, or a "print screen" on Windows — lets you capture any image, even ones that you can't directly download, such as those on Instagram or a PDF.
- To take a screenshot of a specific image or section of the screen, hit "Command + Shift + 4" at the same time, then left click and hold, dragging a box around the content to be saved.
- To screenshot the entire monitor on a Mac, hit "Command + Shift + 3" at the same time.
Note that in both cases, the image will be saved to your Mac's desktop. For more info on how to take a screenshot, check out our article, "How to take a screenshot on a Mac, and find that screenshot on your computer later."
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