How To Save Images in the iPad Safari and Mail Apps

by on May 12, 2010 in iPad Basics, iPad Tips & Tricks, Most Popular Posts

iPad Tips and Tricks

Here’s another basic but very handy tip for those of you who are new to the iPad.  You may often receive a photo in an email that you want to save and keep on your iPad – or spot an image in a web site that you’d like to save.

It’s very easy to do this on the iPad – hit the lovely little read more link to see how …

To Save an Image in an email, within the iPad’s Mail Application

– Tap and hold the image within the email. A dialog will pop up with two options – Save Image and Copy.  Save Image will save it to the Saved Photos album in the Photos app.  Copy will place it on the iPad’s clipboard, available to be pasted wherever you want (in a new mail or a word processing app for example).

SaveinEmail

To Save an Image on a Web Page in the iPad Safari Application

– Same as above really.  Tap and hold on the image.  You’ll get a popup dialog with four choices.  The first two – Open and Open in New Page – relate to the web page itself.  The next two choices though are the same as in the Mail app – Save Image and Copy, and will get you the same results.

save image in Safari on iPad

It’s as easy as that.  Again, a very basic and simple tip – but one that is hopefully handy for those of you just getting to know your new iPad.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Related Posts

{ 54 comments… read them below or add one }

G.A. Veltri June 10, 2010 at 1:53 pm

It's simple but I did not get it immediately..Thanks!

Reply

patrickj June 10, 2010 at 7:40 pm

My pleasure.

Reply

Sandy May 5, 2011 at 8:52 pm

I get two different options. Select and select all. Clicking on either one doesn’t work

Reply

dgreg June 21, 2010 at 9:48 pm

How can you save to another folder besides the 'Saved pictures' folder? Can you create a new folder or rename an existing one?

Reply

patrickj June 22, 2010 at 3:42 pm

You can't do any of that as yet.

Reply

Bill Gates July 28, 2010 at 6:34 pm

Absolutely stupid and completely apple-ish… imagine a single folder with a 1000+ pictures…

Reply

Dur April 20, 2011 at 2:11 pm

Apple really don’t take the practical things into account.

Reply

JOHNQ July 27, 2010 at 1:42 am

aha! that’s how it’s done! thanks

Reply

Donna August 21, 2010 at 4:00 pm

i just downloaded downloads HP and good reader. What can I use these for? I thought I needed them to save images. Can I also save files the way you explained?

Reply

patrickj August 21, 2010 at 4:39 pm

I don't know what the HP app is but Goodreader allows you to work with a wide variety of file formats – you should read its app description for a full listing of file types it supports. You do not need any 3rd party app to save images in the way described above.

Reply

Kylie August 28, 2010 at 6:53 am

How do I save a download from the web?

Reply

patrickj August 28, 2010 at 1:30 pm

What sort of download? You likely will not be able to do it with Mobile Safari. You may need to look at apps like Dropbox or Google Docs to share common doc types from desktop to iPad.

Reply

t3joyner August 28, 2010 at 1:42 pm

I open the email with and the picture is already opened, then it will only copy and not save. I have tried sending it through several different accounts with the same result. I want to use the picture in my lesson plans for school

Reply

patrickj August 29, 2010 at 8:51 pm

Please explain how you are trying to save and maybe I or someone else can help.

Reply

scott December 3, 2010 at 2:06 pm

how do you copy and paste on ipad

Reply

patrickj December 3, 2010 at 2:43 pm

In any text area within any app, tap and hold within a block of text. This will bring up a popup with options to Select or Select All. Select All will do just what it sounds like. If you choose Select, you tap and drag to move the selection area as desired.

Reply

jpegram January 6, 2012 at 2:29 pm

I can’t save jpeg pictures either. It saves as a blank gray square with the jpeg logo on it. I’ve tried converting it to a PDF and that doesn’t work either

Reply

Tomh November 17, 2010 at 11:22 am

Can I save an email by save then copy to notebook

Reply

Chris topher January 22, 2011 at 6:45 pm

Thank you for your help. Just what I needed.

Reply

M Abrams June 25, 2011 at 7:25 am

How do i make additional Albums on my ipad2? and then how do i specify a particlar album into which i save photos received in an email?

Reply

patrickj June 25, 2011 at 11:56 am

You cannot create albums on the iPad. You need to do that in iPhoto or a Windows equivalent and then sync to get them across to your iPad.

You also cannot specify or change the folder that images are saved to by default. They will always go to the Camera Roll.

Reply

M Abrams June 26, 2011 at 9:04 pm

When will Apple fix this issue? Why would we want all photos to go into camera roll? That is crazy. It would seem this would be an easy fix.

Reply

Dee July 14, 2011 at 10:13 am

I have an open picture in an email and the only option that comes up is Copy, so I did that. I assume it saved to the clipboard as you stated above. Where the heck is the clipboard? Is there a program I can use to improve the photo quality, then
put it on a program cover for a memorial service?

Thanks

Reply

patrickj July 14, 2011 at 10:19 am

When you tap and hold an image in the Mail app you should definitely get an option to Save Image.

There is no separate clipboard applet on iOS – once you have selected Copy you can go into another app, tap in an input field, and choose Paste.

There are lots of good 3rd party apps for editing and improving your photos – a few I’d highly recommend include FX Photo Studio HD, Photogene, PhotoForge2, Photo Toaster, and 100 Cameras in 1 for iPad.

Reply

Ellen Boccio July 20, 2011 at 1:23 pm

Thanks for the info. Extremely helpful.

Reply

Jordin Shenk July 23, 2011 at 10:14 pm

I saved a photo (like you said) in an email but it will not show up in my camera roll, or photos app. What should I do?

Reply

Martha September 10, 2011 at 8:44 am

Same thing happen to me I can’t find the photo I saved anyone figure this out yet?

Reply

Nicr August 5, 2011 at 2:19 pm

I am a teacher and new to the iPAD. My students will be using iPAD next year and are used to embedding the citation for photos in the pix they copy off the web. Can you do the same thing on iPad?

Reply

patrickj August 6, 2011 at 9:02 am

Is that done by way of a watermark on the images? If so, then they should be able to do that via a 3rd party image editing app.

Reply

Laura Coholan August 24, 2011 at 12:16 am

You are the best, thank you for the help!!!!

Reply

Degen102 September 2, 2011 at 10:05 am

Wow,thanks a lot

Reply

Susan Noad September 8, 2011 at 2:56 pm

When I tap save image is how’s up in photos as a blank picture with jpg on it.

Reply

judy September 12, 2011 at 7:48 am

When I try to save an image emailed to myself (taken with a new camera), it only appears as a grey rectangle with jpg in the middle. No such problem with my very old camera…help!!!

Reply

Dinyar September 17, 2011 at 3:41 am

Thank you the instructions were simple and instant….

Reply

Richard Reynolds September 21, 2011 at 11:09 am

I’m trying to save a graphics file that was emailed to me and shows up as part of the message. When I held my finger on the image I got two choices. I don’t remember what they were, but they were not either of the choices referenced above. I followed my gut, and the image is now saved in by iBooks library??!!

I don’t know what good that does me, because I can’t seem to copy it from there either.

Suggestions?

Reply

Patrick Jordan September 21, 2011 at 12:46 pm

If it’s a graphics file it should always and only offer to ‘Save Image’ and that goes to the Camera Roll. It sounds to me as if you were sent a different file type, perhaps a PDF. Can you confirm what file type the attachment was?

Reply

Lisa Porter October 9, 2011 at 3:14 pm

Hi there!
I know how to save, copy, paste, etc photos on my iPad. What I don’t know how to do is “save as”. I often find pictures to use later on my blog or tumblr or interest. When I go to my saved photos to retrieve them, there is no info that saved with it so I don’t know where the picture came from to give the source credit.
I use photogene for editing.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Lisa

Reply

Patrick Jordan October 10, 2011 at 4:06 pm

Maybe make use of the Evernote app or a similar note-taking app. Open each image in Evernote (or other app) and tags or notes to the image to indicate the source. I’d start with Evernote for this task because it’s such a powerful, feature-rich app.

Reply

Fred Hall October 20, 2011 at 2:50 pm

I have Ipad2…can I email photos….HOW?

Reply

Patrick Jordan October 20, 2011 at 3:29 pm

In the Photos app you can tap on the Share button to send an individual photo, or you can select multiple photos and copy them into an email.

Reply

Ben October 21, 2011 at 11:58 am

I’m trying to save an image from an email (also have gotten one from a website)….no problems saving it to photos….however, I am trying to paste that image into my email SIGNATURE, and it will only paste the LINK….not the image. I have also downloaded the clipboard app….same result. Thanks for any help!!!!

Reply

Cindy November 25, 2011 at 1:08 pm

I had a lot of pictures that were in the “saved photos” folder under the ” brightness & wallpaper” tag. Now they are gone. The tag that said “saved photos” is gone. I didn’t do anything but put images from the web on it. Help!

Reply

LC November 27, 2011 at 1:42 am

HELP!

Nothing happens when i click on the image. i do not get the pop up window to save image. It is very frustrating I can’t not figure how to save image. I am using OS 4.3.3. Could this be why???

Reply

Patrick Jordan November 27, 2011 at 11:00 am

No, this feature works fine in with your version of the OS. Are you just tapping the image or doing a tap and hold? You need to tap on the image and hold in order for the popup to appear.

Reply

Zak December 3, 2011 at 4:17 pm

Hello – how do I copy a photo [ from Photos ] and paste into Notes in my ipad2?

Reply

chris December 22, 2011 at 10:46 am

when i attempt to SAVE a PDF the only options i get are:
tap 2xs = copy
tap+hold = Quick Look, Open in “iBooks”, Open in…(iBooks and Dropbox are the only options there).

how can i get this PDF saved to my iPad so I can potentially crop/edit it?
Thank you in advance!

Reply

Patrick Jordan December 22, 2011 at 10:52 am

Open In offers the apps that support PDF handling – so it’s doing what it’s supposed to. Anyway, to answer your question – open it in Dropbox and from there you can choose to save it to the photo library where you can crop the image and do some very basic editing.

If you need to more advanced image editing on the iPad, then you’ll want to get the image sent in a more standard image format.

Reply

chris December 22, 2011 at 1:36 pm

thank you. its for a work related function so i’m not always in control of the incoming format.
I was able to work out a process utilizing an app converter which appears in the “Open IN…” list. So it worked perfectly.

Thank you for the response though!

Reply

Joyce Venturi February 27, 2012 at 12:55 pm

I have tried repestily to save images to my iPad and I have held image down for 3 seconds and I do not get a drop down. I am really frustrated. I have really tried several times and cannot save images. Please help.

Reply

Sara Jane May 13, 2012 at 9:45 pm

I am having the same issues, it only gives me the option to copy, and I never see it again.

Reply

Lilly April 21, 2012 at 4:36 am

Im new to the iPad thing and I follow the direction but when I tab and hold the image it won’t work for me nothing would came up ._…….

Reply

Joni May 2, 2012 at 10:42 pm

All I’m getting is print

Reply

gundersonmom May 5, 2012 at 3:17 am

I used the save feature on a website picture and when I try to retrieve the photo on my iPad in the Photos App, I can see the pictures are there but they are all blacked out.

Reply

Sara Jane May 13, 2012 at 9:43 pm

I too only have the copy selection appear when I want to save a pic from a web page onto my iPad. There is no save option, only copy, and then after I copy it, and go to the document I do not get a paste option. I am currently using the app called pages to create presentations in and I have not been able to copy, save or paste anything into it….please help!

Reply

Leave a Comment

Previous post:

Next post: