Hello John, thank you for your response! You have confirmed what I thought.
Do you have any recommended workaround for this issue? I mean, I have tried to hook for the image-edit action so that I can create a physical copy of the image. However, I have not been able to determine the best approach or find any effective workarounds yet.
The only viable solution I can see now is to upload an additional image (a copy of the original) to assign it a different ID.
Thank you!