Hmm, did you mention Google because this problem is specific to Google image results?

Does it work any better if you:

• right-click the image and click Copy Image
• then right-click the desktop (or a blank area of a folder) and click Paste

Yes, this happens in google images. But when I use bing, it does not have this problem. And copying and pasting doesn't seem to be possible because my desktop has the "paste" button grayed out.

I think a script in the image results page is intercepting and blanking the clipboard to make it hard to copy from the page. This may be difficult to bypass without breaking copy/paste on a number of sites.

In addition to the Save Image As method, you can Ctrl+click/Middle-click the View Image button (on the right side of the black panel) to view the image stand-alone in a new tab (on its original address) where copying should work normally. That might be a little faster.

When I view an image in another tab, I can drag and drop successfully, but I still would want to click and drag directly from the image on the page.