With 55 million images uploaded daily on Instagram, we can find ourselves exploring the app every second of every day and not see all the content that people upload.
Instagram can be used for inspiration, ideas and help us create our own reality based on other people’s ideas and concepts, but if you find a particular image that resonates with you and you don’t like it or save it, chances are you will never see it again.
How then, do we make sure that we can access these images and make sure we don’t lose them? We can save Instagram images in a variety of ways; in this article we will detail how to do this.
Why Do We Want To Save Instagram Photos?
There are many reasons why we want to save Instagram photos, it could be that one of your friends has uploaded a photo of you that you want to keep or maybe you have seen a kitchen design that you would love in your own home.
Instagram can give us inspiration and ideas for every part of our lives, from recipes, holidays, workouts to idea boards.
Whatever your reason for wanting to save these images are, we’ve got you covered so that you don’t lose access to the content that fires your imagination!
Business Ideas and Competition
When it comes to gaining competitive advantage in your selected industry it is always good to monitor what your competition are doing.
Instagram is now one of the biggest marketing platforms on the face of the earth and companies upload images of their products and services daily. This gives us never before seen access to our competition on a daily basis.
By saving collections from your competition, you are able to quickly access their content. You can also use these photos to bench them mark against your own content, products and services. Use the collection to differentiate yourself and gain competitive advantage!
Instagram Collections
You can easily save photos within the Instagram app itself. When you see a picture you like, click on the bottom right hand side on the icon that resembles a bookmark. This will instantly save the picture or video to your collection!
To access your collection, go to your own Instagram feed, click the three lines icon on the top right hand side and selected ‘saved’, here you can see all the posts you have saved!
If you are looking to be super organised with the photos you are saving from Instagram, you can create categories which are called collections. You can name these in line with what you want to save, this could be fitness inspiration, holiday ideas or a collection of ideas you like for your own home.
Whilst this is a really good feature of the Instagram app, it also has its draw backs. As you are saving other people’s content into your own collections, they have the control over the content.
That means if they were to remove the photo you have saved, you would no longer be able to access it in your collections.
How To Save Instagram Photos For Offline Use On Your Phone
One of the quickest and most effective ways to save Instagram photos for offline use is to use your phones screenshot or screengrab facility. This will save the entire photo along with anything else on your screen at the time.
Whilst it isn’t the prettiest method of saving photos, you can crop it down to make it look more aesthetically pleasing. By using the screen grab you are able to access the photo on your device at any time!
How Do I Save My Instagram Photos To My Camera Roll?
If you have taken a photo whilst in the Instagram app or want to save a photo that you have expertly edited, you can easily save your photo directly from the Instagram app to your phone!
All you have to do is go to settings and click on save original photo. You’ll now be able to keep all future uploads that you’ve edited!
How To Download Instagram Photos From Your PC To Your Files
This method of downloading and saving Instagram photos is a little more complex, but it means you can have access to a high quality .JPG image on your own computer.
Step One
Open Instagram on your laptop or desktop PC, find the image that you want to download and click ‘copy link’
Step Two
Open safari or chrome and past this link into the URL at the stop of the screen and hit enter.
Step Three
Now you’ve got the image open in safari or another browser, find view in the heading and click view source.
Step Four
This is the fun part, don’t worry, we’re not asking you to learn HTML (but now is a good a time as any to start).
What we need to do is look for the URL for the JPEG that we want to download and save to your computer. Use your search function to find the line that has .JPG in it, as this is the image!
Look for the line of code that begins ‘https://scontent and copy this until you reach /> at the end of the code, copy this line.
Step Five
Paste the copied line of code into the URL box on a new tab and then you will see the image you want to save come up! Now all you need to do is simply right click and save the image. Easy, right?
Instagram, Terms of Service And Your Content
Instagram and their terms of service can be difficult to navigate, even if you are up together on these, they are constantly changing and evolving.
If you yourself have taken the photo or the video you own the copyright to the media and thus it is your property, however buried deep within their terms of service it states that by uploading the image or video to the platform you are agreeing that others are able to share the content.
Because it is your content, you are able to download, keep and distribute it at your own will.
Instagram, Terms of Service And Other Users Content
As previously mentioned, people who have taken the photo and video are the primary owners of the content, but once it has been shared on Instagram the content takes on a life of its own and almost become autonomous.
That being said, Instagram at any point can sell the licence to the picture, but this is unlikely to occur as it may alienate users and turn people away from the platform.
However, you need to be aware of the risks when looking to download copyrighted material, it is the same as downloading copyrighted music and other content from illicit sources, so be aware of the risks before you begin downloading images that aren’t your own.
Final thoughts
Instagram is a wealth of user generated content that can be used to inspire us and awe us. We can use the content in a verity of ways, from holiday bucket lists, house design ideas to even monitoring our competitors.
With so many images uploaded on a daily basis, we want to make sure that we can always access the images that spark our interest.
We can save Instagram images in a variety of ways, from saving them to our collections, making sure that we save the images or videos we upload or even screenshot other people’s content so that we can access it offline.
If you want to download other users’ content, follow the step by step guide but please be aware of Instagram’s terms of service and copyright legislation surrounding this.
Make sure you never lose a photo or inspiration again by following this guide to saving Instagram content.
