We all have heard of green screen that is used in Hollywood movies. What they do is basically put a plain green screen in the background when shooting videos. Later that green color in the background is replaced with any other video, animation or picture giving you an effect that the scene was shot somewhere else.
Lately, some livestreaming software like OBS have also added support for this type of green screen. And now Skype has also added a similar feature albeit you don’t need an actual green screen in the background. In new versions of Skype, you can select a background image and it will automatically change the background of your webcam stream with that image – giving a green screen like effect.
This is how you can set your own custom background image for the webcam video in Skype:
- Launch Skype by double-clicking on its desktop icon.
- Click on the ellipses (three dots) to open Skype menu and select Settings from there. Alternatively, you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+Comma for opening Skype settings.
- From the left side select the category Audio & Video.
- Under the webcam preview you will have three options – None, Blur and Add Image. Click on Add Image to choose a background image from your local storage device. You can choose almost any type of image file – BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, SVG, WEBP, ICO, JFIF, and more.
- You can see the preview of the background image in the Skype webcam preview. If you are satisfied with the results then you can close down the settings window. Next time you video call someone, they will see your webcam with a background image as if you are using a green screen.
This feature is available only in the latest version of Skype for Desktop. This means that you must have at least version 8.59.0.77 for this feature to be made available in the settings.