How do I upload old screenshots taken with traditional methods to Steam?

Question

Steam now has a screenshot-hosting feature, but I've been unable to break the habit of hitting F5 to take traditional TGA screenshots in Team Fortress 2, rather than the new hotkey F12 (the default) to take screenshots for uploading to Steam.

There are a couple of images I'd like to upload, but as they weren't taken using the new hotkey they don't appear in Screenshot Manager. Rather, they're in the old screenshots folder, %ProgramFiles%\Steam\steamapps\[username]\team fortress 2\tf\screenshots, in the TGA format.

Is there a way I can import these screenshots to Screenshot Manager for upload to my Steam profile?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, no. There is currently no official way to upload screenshots to Steam directly.

However, there are work-arounds on the Steam forums, with varying rates of success.

I personally would suggest waiting until Steam officially releases a method to do this.

Answer 2

Take a screenshot in a game with the Steam overlay. When you exit the game, a window will pop up with your recent screenshots for that game. Just click "View on Disk" and it'll open up the screenshots folder (folders are game-specific and named with numbers). Drop whatever pictures you want (Steam uses .jpg, not sure if others will work) in there, but be sure to make a 200x125 thumbnail of the picture in the thumbnails directory or it won't show up. You may have to restart Steam before they show up but you should then be able to upload them like normal.

Sometimes, I have run into issues, where it assigns a random time that the screenshot was taken, if that matters, and I don't yet know how to fix that. Also, you may have to use the same naming scheme as the normal screenshots (year-month-day_#####.jpg - 2011-09-10_00001.jpg, for example).

Answer 3

Saving new files using the naming convention including thumbnails fails for me: the screenshot manager sees them, but uploading reports an error.

However, I was able to open a screenshot captured via Steam and paste the existing screenshot I wanted over it - save and overwrite and it uploads just fine. Not ideal if you want to do many screenshots, though.

Answer 4

1. Take an in-game screenshot with Steam and then exit game. Open the Steam screenshot manager and choose Last Session > View on Disk. (Make sure you don't upload anything.)

2. Find the screenshot you would like to upload and put it in your Steam screenshots folder. (It should have opened from step 1.)

3. Copy the name of the screenshot you took with Steam.

4. Name the screenshot you took with Steam to something temporary.

5. Paste the copied name to replace/rename the picture you want to upload.

6. Close the Steam screenshot manager and then open it again.

Your picture will be available for upload but in the manager; it will look like the one you replaced. Simply select upload and view online and you will see the correct one.