Cooking mod button and changing the steam workshop picture question

I am wondering what exactly the cook mod button does. I know I need to click it and I’m wondering if it’s something I need to do every time I update my mod. If I just want to update my mod picture do I need to run the process again? Thanks for your help!

Cooking (to my limited understanding) simply packages all of your files into a usable format for the game to use. So any time you update any of the files within that package, yes, you need to recook. If you’ve changed none of those files, you should be able to just do the upload process with picture change, and be okay.

(I am not the most experienced person here, so if I’m wrong hopefully someone will correct me, but I’m pretty sure of this answer.)

Thank you for your help.