When are images in emails sent?

When are images in emails sent?

Do they actually get delivered within the email? Or are they downloaded from mautic as soon as you open the mail in your client? Or something completely different?

Little confused by the question

Emails send HTML

Its up to the users browser to then download the images when someone reads the email for the first time.
Then there after most email browsers will cache the images on their local so not to have to keep redownloading the images.

In the case of Google tho - If you send multiple emails to gmail, they will consume the html, download the images once and then cache these images for all their gmail users.

Thus If you send 100 gmail emails, the images from mautics perspective are downloaded once.

The only thing really attached are “Attachments” or “Assets”

I feel I am missing something and broader context, why do you ask?
May have provided a 101 answer something completely different

thank you.
I asked because we sent a huge load of emails with an image which is not allowed to use for marketing purposes in Germany (it was a certain dog). So the question which came up was:
Does it make a difference if we change the image in the email, even though we sent them already?
Would it actually affect the mails of the readers which did not yet open the mail.

Of course we would have to replace the image with the same url and name of the image - not simply change the image in the builder, because the html was sent already.

So you would replace the original file on the server where ever you referenced it in the directory using an ftp tool.

If it was uploaded in mautic you can use the built in media manager /elfinder and replace it in the relevant folder (needs to be character perfect and same file type etc.)
https://mauticpath.com/elfinder

Just note that Gmail will cache the files after you send them and anyone whom has read the email again would have cached on the local after the images have been downloaded.

But broadly speaking the images if not already cached will pull down directly from the source or src if you look at the email code.

The only time you have emails embedded in your email is if you are using Base64 encoding (highly highly unlikely as its very inefficient) but this is when you embed the raw image into the email html code (common in email signatures with logo’s if sent from a desktop).