Sometimes you find an image on Heart Photos that belongs with your own: a scene for a project, a reference for a drawing, a whole gallery somebody put together that you want to build on. Downloading it gives you a file on your computer. Save to my library gives you something better: the photo, or the whole gallery, in your own library, where you can treat it exactly as if you had uploaded it yourself.
Saving a photo
- Open somebody else's photo that is public or unlisted.
- Press Photo info (the button at the top, or the I key) to open the panel at the side.
- Under Download, press Save to my library.
A note says "Saved to your library", with Open it to go straight to your copy. The button then reads Open my copy, so you never save the same photo twice by accident. If you are signed out, the button takes you to sign in first.
You will not see the button on your own photos, on a private photo, or on one in its owner's Trash.
Saving a whole gallery
Open somebody else's public or unlisted gallery and press Save to my library in its heading. You get a new gallery of your own with the same title, description and tags, holding your own copy of every photo in it, in the same order. Galleries inside it come too, saved the same way and nested where they stood.
The note tells you what happened, for example "Saved to your library, public like the original: 3 new photos and 1 new gallery inside, 2 already yours." Only what you do not have is copied: a photo you saved before, or one you uploaded yourself, goes into the new gallery as it is. Somebody else's private photos and galleries are skipped, and the note counts them. A very large gallery is copied up to 5,000 photos and galleries, and up to eight galleries deep; past that, the note says the rest was left out.
What comes with it
Your copy keeps the photo's words and history: its name, description, tags, credit, license, alt text, source, rotation, and its video moment if it has one. An image made by AI still says so, with the model and prompt that made it, and keeps its Made by AI tag.
What stays behind is what belongs to the original owner: their rating and likes, and the photo's place in their pairs and series. Your copy is never marked as your own work, since it is not.
As visible as the original
A copy starts as visible as the photo you saved: a public photo's copy is public, an unlisted one's is unlisted. A gallery's copy takes the gallery's visibility, and each photo in it takes its own original's. One exception: a publisher's promotional image (a press image its publisher shares to promote a game, say) starts unlisted in your library, because the publisher shared it, not you. The button's tooltip tells you which it will be before you press it.
Change it whenever you like. From the moment you save it, the copy is yours: rename it, describe it, tag it, add it to your galleries, make it private or public, or delete it.
Nothing is copied, and nothing is shared back
Saving makes a new record in your library with its own id, but it points at the same stored file, so nothing is uploaded or encoded again and the save takes a moment. The two copies are independent: nothing you do touches the original, and nothing its owner does touches yours. If either of you deletes theirs, the other keeps the image.
A saved photo counts toward your plan's storage as an upload would, so you can see it on the storage meter. If it would not fit, the note says so with See plans. For a gallery, the whole thing is checked before anything is made, so you never end up with half a gallery.
He.art keeps a private note of where each copy came from. Your copy does not show it, and neither does any page, feed or share card; only He.art's admins can see it.
Try it
Open Heart Photos, find a public image you like, press I and then Save to my library. And if you are new here, He.art is where the same account asks questions, writes docs and makes images of its own.