Possibly tangential, but you can copy and paste and get different results based on context (eg. copy image file, paste into HTML doc, get image tag; paste into terminal, get path; paste into mail client, get attachment; paste into image editor, get the image itself). It definitely works in OSX, but IIRC it's supported in Windows too.

I last tried this around 18 months ago, in a Firefox extension. Was a bit fiddly but I could do what I wanted.