Currently you can to set an image to a clipboard (from its path) and then set a Stream Deck icon from that clipboard, but this can get quite messy if you have a lot of buttons with icon sets that require their own clipboards to avoid conflict.
It would be nice if you could set a SD icon directly from a path, as you can with other image actions.
That seems like a reasonable request. I don't have a StreamDeck (I was just in the store today to see if I could buy one, but they were out of stock) but I think you can currently do what you want in two steps, like this:
Hi Sleepy. Really appreciate all your helpful comments lately. 
Yes, that's exactly right and is what I described in the above post, but it's a bit clunky, hence the request.
I empathize. I simply wanted to point out the equivalence in case others didn't know about it. And to make sure I understood your request.
Can you message stream deck support team? It would be much easier if we could drag and drop the pic straight to stream deck?
You're right to say that Elgato should look more closely at the needs of KM users (setting profiles externally, for example). However, I can't imagine how what you're suggesting would work. You can already drag and drop images to many types of buttons in the SD software, but the benefit of sending images from KM to its SD plugin is flexibility and congruity with macros and their functions.
I suppose they could add the ability to add numerous images which could be chosen by a parameter from KM but that would still require changes to KM's actions to accommodate that. Adding file support for SD button icons is the simplest solution I can think of as it's just adding one extra option to the dropdown, which already exists for other image-related actions.
I would find this incredibly useful as well.
@peternlewis – did you ever see this?
You don't need to use the System Clipboard, you can use any Named Clipboard, so it is pretty easy already.
Yes, there could be an option added to the Stream Deck Set Image action to allow path explicitly, but that's already a single use menu I believe so it would have to be additional UI just for that action, which makes it a low priority when there is such a simple workaround already.
That might change if Stream Deck supported animated gifs which had to be specified as files, but currently they don't when used from the API.
Hey Neil,
In view of Peter's answer I suggest you create a favorite with the appropriate grouped items.
-Chris
Yes, this is what I'm doing. You may need to reserve a dedicated named clipboard for each image to avoid conflict when multiple buttons are being set at the same time, so that's potentially 32 of them, assuming you only have one Stream Deck XL. Doable though, as you say. Honestly, I'm less concerned about it now than I was back in March as, in reality, the number of buttons being changed simultaneously on my setup doesn't exceed 5.
I won't pretend to know anything about app development, but this is what I imagined:
This is how I've been doing it. 
