Saving pictures from web pages

 Claude finished the response

When I right-click on a picture and choose "Save image in a new tab," I find that usually when I click the ensuing tab image, a bigger version appears.  If I then save that image to disk, do I get the bigger version, or would I get the same even if I hadn't?
Examined browser zoom mechanics and clarified file resolution independence

You'd get the same file either way — the click-to-zoom is just a display trick, not a different image.

Here's what's actually happening: when a browser opens an image in its own tab, it often auto-scales large images down to fit the window (this is Chrome/Firefox's built-in image viewer behavior). If the actual image is bigger than what fits on screen, the cursor turns into a magnifying glass, and clicking toggles between "fit to window" and "actual size" (100%, i.e., one image pixel per screen pixel). That's purely a CSS/rendering change in how the browser displays the file — the underlying image data sitting in that tab never changes size.

When you save (right-click → Save Image As, or Ctrl+S), the browser writes out the original file it downloaded/has cached, at its full native resolution — regardless of whether you'd zoomed in, zoomed out, or never clicked at all. So saving before vs. after clicking to "zoom" gives you an identical file.

The one caveat: this all assumes you're looking at a single image URL. Some sites use "responsive images" (srcset) where the browser may pick a lower-resolution variant depending on your screen/zoom level, and in rare cases that could mean a different file gets fetched. But that's a property of the source site's HTML, not of you clicking to zoom in the viewer tab — and it's the exception rather than the rule.

My viewing application shrinks/expands an image to fit the screen without distortion.  I take it to cover those few responsive images you mention I should go ahead and click the image routinely anyway.
Recognized straightforward query requiring minimal deliberation

That's a reasonable habit, though it's worth being precise about what the click does and doesn't protect you from.

Clicking to view at "actual size" only tells you what resolution the file already sitting in that tab is. It doesn't change which file got fetched — so if a site served you a low-res srcset variant, clicking will just show you that low-res file at full size (possibly looking soft/blurry blown up), not fetch you a better one. It's a diagnostic, not a fix.

So clicking is useful as a sanity check — if the "actual size" view looks noticeably worse or smaller than you'd expect, that's your signal something's off, and you'd want to find the image through another route (view page source, use "view image info," or try the site's own download/original-size link if it has one) rather than just accepting what the browser handed you.

But if you're just asking "should I bother clicking before saving, given my viewer auto-fits" — no, it's not necessary for the ordinary case. Since the file itself doesn't change based on clicking, and your viewer already shows you a clean fit-to-screen version, clicking adds no information unless you specifically want to check the pixel dimensions against what you expected.

There are times when either the horizontal or the vertical size is not enough to fill the screen when the other dimension has done so and distortion results.  In those cases I have to accept a border.
Recognized straightforward technical inquiry requiring direct response

That's right, and it's simple geometry rather than anything about the image quality or fetching — it's just aspect ratio mismatch.

When a viewer scales "to fit" without distortion, it has to pick a single scale factor and apply it equally to both dimensions (that's what "no distortion" means — preserving the width:height ratio). It picks whichever scale factor makes the image fit within both screen dimensions simultaneously. So:

    If the image is relatively wider than your screen (wide panorama on a squarish monitor), the scale factor gets set by width, and you end up with empty space above and below — horizontal fills, vertical has borders (letterboxing).
    If the image is relatively taller than your screen (a tall portrait shot), the scale factor gets set by height, and you get empty space on the sides — vertical fills, horizontal has borders (pillarboxing).

The only way to eliminate the border entirely would be to let one dimension overflow off-screen (crop) or to stretch the image disproportionately (distort) — and since you've told your viewer not to distort, cropping is the only alternative, which is usually worse since you'd lose part of the image.

So yes — accepting the border is the correct tradeoff if you want to see the whole image undistorted. It's not a flaw in the viewer or a sign anything's wrong with the file; any "fit without distortion" scheme will do this whenever the image and screen don't share the same aspect ratio.
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