If you are among 120 million active Steam users, you can enjoy about 50 thousand different games. But, regardless of the game you play, users may and do report reported problems with screenshots they’ve taken. Though there are many issues, you’re not alone if you took a screenshot in Steam, noticed it turned out blurry and started wondering why that is and how to fix it. We can help.
Common Causes of a Blurry Steam Screenshot
Your screenshots are coming out blurry because of the way Steam renders images. When you take a screenshot, Steam captures what’s on the screen at that particular moment. However, it sometimes doesn’t consider the fact that monitors display images at different resolutions. As a result, the image is rendered at a lower resolution than what your monitor is displaying, which results in blurriness.
This is because they’re using a lossy compression algorithm on the screenshots to save space on Steam servers. These algorithms reduce an image in size while also lowering the quality, for example, in the JPG/JPEG format. Additionally, at some point, even if the image is not compressed to JPEG/JPG, the resultant image is still blurrier than the one in the real-time gameplay. Fortunately, there are a few things you can try to fix the problem on your end. All you need to do is change some settings in Steam.
1. Increase Steam Screenshot Quality
To take a full-quality screenshot, press and hold the Alt and F1 keys together. Alternatively, if you’re using ENB (Enhanced Natural Beauty), hit PrntScr (Print Screen) or Insert to take a high-quality photo (most likely PrntScrn for recent versions of ENB). Additionally, in Steam’s settings, you may alter Steam so that it saves uncompressed images. These are the basic rules for taking clear Steam screenshots:
- Screen Size: Fill the whole screen with the window you want to capture.
- Picture Format: Choose the PNG format over JPEG when saving your screenshots. Go to settings > in-game, then save an uncompressed copy. The image will be saved as PNG and will not be compressed.
2. Enable Windows Advanced Scaling Settings
Open the Start menu in Windows 10 or 11. Now:
- Search for “display” and select Display settings.
- Under the “Advanced scaling settings” section, select Advanced scaling.
- Switch the slider next to “Let Windows try to fix apps, so they don’t look blurry” from ‘off’ to on.
To save a screenshot now, press F12, the default Screenshot key. The Steam Screenshot Uploader window will display if you close the game. Now you can check the image quality and your screenshots should now be coming out crystal clear. If they’re still blurry, try adjusting the resolution in-game until they look right.
3. Fix the Blurry Steam Screenshot Problem for Specific Games
Some games have a tad more screenshot-related options, for instance, the newer Counter-Strike ones. Follow the steps below to reduce the blurriness of your screenshots in supported games:
- Go to the Steam settings before opening the In-Game tab.
- Select the checkbox “Save an uncompressed copy.”
- Select the “Screenshot” folder and create a separate folder for your Steam screenshots. Ensure you remember the screenshot key combination.
- Verify that the current game you’ll be capturing has the “Steam Overlay” option turned on. Take as many screenshots with the Steam screenshot shortcut key.
- Quit the game. This is optional since you can still access the screenshot directory with the game running.
- If you exit the game, the Screenshot window appears to handle your new pictures (save, delete, or publish them). You can safely close this box.
- If you’re still in the game, go to View to choose the Screenshots option.
- Locate your PNG photographs in the previously configured screenshot folder.