Photos & gallery

Taking a photo

Space (or Y) takes the photo, on the menu and with the menu hidden. The screen flashes, the shutter sound plays (it works while the game is paused), and Photo saved appears at the top right with a thumbnail and the file name once the file is written.

The photo uses the settings of the moment the shutter fires. It is cropped to the chosen aspect ratio, and the stickers, frame and logo are drawn into it at full resolution. Guides and the menu are never in the photo. Encoding and writing happen in the background, so the game doesn’t stop for them.

Resolution and format

Profile setting	Default	Description
Capture Scale	1	1 to 8. 1 takes the photo at screen resolution; higher values render it larger than the screen.
Max Capture Size	8192 px	The longest side of a photo. It limits the capture scale: at 1080p the largest scale is about 4.3, at 4K about 2.1.
Format	PNG	PNG or JPEG.
Jpeg Quality	92	10 to 100.

Captures above screen resolution use Unreal’s high-resolution screenshot, which briefly stalls the game while the image is rendered and read back.

HDR displays

With HDR output on, the photo is made from the HDR picture and saved as SDR (PNG or JPEG), so it looks right everywhere.

Profile setting	Default	Description
HDR To SDR Exposure	0 EV	−3 to 3. Brightens (+) or darkens (−) the SDR photo made from the HDR picture.
Save HDR Original	Off	Also writes the linear HDR picture as an EXR next to the photo (desktop platforms).

On UE 5.8 the engine hands the HDR picture over directly. On UE 5.1 to 5.7 photo mode reads it from the screen, so photos with an HDR display are taken at screen resolution there, and photo mode says “HDR display: photos are taken at screen resolution.”

Where photos are saved

Folder	Location
Saved (default)	`Saved/Photos` in the project. In a packaged game, the game’s folder in the player’s local app data.
My Games	`Documents/My Games/<Project>/Photos` (the user folder on other platforms).
Custom	The absolute folder in Custom Folder.

Photos are named <File Prefix>_<date>_<time>, for example Photo_2026-10-14_12-26-35.png; a number is added if the name exists.

Clips are saved to the same folder, named with Clip Prefix (Clip_2026-10-24_18-30-05.gif).

Next to the photos, a Thumbnails folder holds, per photo:

a JPEG thumbnail, Thumbnail Size pixels wide (384 by default), for the gallery;
a small JSON file with the photo’s width and height, the time, the level, the game’s name, the field of view, the aperture and the filter.

The gallery

Press G (or View) to open the gallery. It shows photos and clips, newest first, large, with a line such as “1 of 12 · Oct 14, 2026, 12:26 PM · 1920 × 1080”, and a strip of thumbnails below; arrows at the ends show there are more. Clips in the strip carry a play badge with the format and length, such as “GIF 3.0 s”.

A clip plays in place, with a play / pause button, a progress bar and the time (“1.2 / 3.0 s”). Open file shows the photo or clip in the system file browser (desktop platforms).

	Keyboard	Gamepad
Browse	← →	D-pad
Play / Pause (clips)	Enter	A
Delete	Delete, twice	X, twice
Back	Esc	B

Deleting asks for a second press within 2.5 seconds (“Press again to delete this photo.” or “Press again to delete this clip.”) and then removes the file, its thumbnail and its JSON file. With no photos, the gallery says “No photos yet.”

Thumbnails and full pictures load in the background, so the gallery opens at once even with many photos. The gallery is also available outside photo mode from Blueprint or C++ (Get Gallery), for example for a gallery in your main menu; see Blueprint & C++.

When something goes wrong

Message	Meaning
The photo could not be taken.	The capture didn’t finish within eight seconds.
The photo could not be encoded.	The image couldn’t be turned into a PNG or JPEG.
Could not write file.	The folder can’t be written to. The message shows the full path.