In a web browser you can right click on an image to open a menu, and choose "Save Image as..." to save a picture displayed on a website to your computer. If the menu doesn't have the option "Save Image as...", try holding shift and right clicking to force the default menu. On smartphones, tap and hold to bring up the menu.

I was a bit surprised recently to find out that even many otherwise tech-savvy younger adults don't know about that, or that anything you look at on the internet is already downloaded to your device. I feel the people of my older generation have failed the younger generations online, for having not taught you about this, and I apologize. I'm not an educator myself, so I don't know what happened, but I can do my best to help now that I know.

So first of all, it's literally impossible to display something on your device without downloading it. The internet doesn't work like a telescope, letting you see far away things. It lets you connect to a remote computer, download copies of the data/files stored on that computer, and read/view/listen/watch your local copy. Streaming audio and video like Spotify and YouTube work by using a file format that can be played/viewed without being fully intact, and sending it to you a bit at a time. Livestreams are a bit more technical, but it's the same idea; the streamer's device is rapidly saving and uploading, and you're downloading bit by bit to your device and reading/viewing/listening to/watching your local copy.

If you can see, read, watch or hear it, it's already in your device's memory, and likely also already saved to your hard drive or other long term storage, as part of your Web Browser's temporary storage cache. There's ways to make things more complicated or difficult for people to retrieve the file from their device for re-use or re-distribution, but difficult is the best you can do. If anyone or any business has told you or offered you a service to share your files, be they pictures, text, audio or video, over the internet, and claimed they could not be copied and redistributed, you have been decieved.

Even with complex systems publishers make to get around this, like a company making their own app that doesn't have an option for 'download' and doesn't have a 'file' visible in your system, the data is there on your system. It's just harder to access. As an example you might have seen 3D models 'ripped' from video games before. It's not easy to get that data, but it's possible and some people are very dedicated to making it happen.

This whole thing, learning that some, perhaps many, folks don't know about these things, was spurred by a recent new policy by the art gallery site DeviantArt. They have instituted a download cap. 10 downloads per week for free users, and for paid users at their lower tier. I saw one user with a higher tier complaining about being limited to 150 a week. I was a bit concerned folks were being tricked over there into thinking people couldn't download/save the image without that button, but I've learned something weird about DeviantArt that makes me like the site even less. ^.^;;

It turns out that the art you see in DeviantArt galleries isn't the picture the artist made. You can download that picture with the "Free Download" button that they have recently added a weekly cap to. The images displayed on DeviantArt are .jpg images generated from the actual file. I went ahead and tested it on one of the pics I have over there.

For an image I have hosted on DeviantArt, I was able to get three different versions, not including a thumbnail that I didn't bother downloading, but that'd make four. So, there's the basic image that DA shows you when you go to a deviation's page, which is a shrunken .jpg based on the image. Then, there's the 'full size' version you get if you click on the image, an it's a larger but still shrunken JPG based on the original image. It's the same image if you click it again to make it actually "full size", because on initial display it is shrunken by your browser rather than DA, with the normal scaling method. Finally, the "Free Download" button got me the actual file, at full scale and it's original .png format. The files each had a small random bit of text for file storage, and the .jpg files each had a suffix added to mark their purpose, -pre and -fullview.

I got a bit nervous after that and came over here to FA to check by looking at the same image hosted here, and thankfully FA is sane (in that regard). While it can optionally generate a thumbnail image (or you can upload one of your own!) the file you see displayed on a submission's page and the file you get if you hit the download button are both the same actual file that was uploaded.