At the moment, technology is at the peak of its development. Information systems make it possible to bring together hundreds of people around the world in a single video conference. Many companies sent their employees to work remotely in isolation, and video conferencing has become the new standard for safely communicating with other people.
The most popular application for all educational institutions and business companies is Zoom. But what about when you need to urgently contact your colleagues via video, while children are running around or in the background an uncleaned room bothers you? Fortunately, there is a simple way out – to change the virtual background in the video conferencing program, which will easily hide any details of your home life. How to do this in the popular Zoom app, we will tell in the article.
Since this is a new work format for many, we decided to prepare for you a small guide on where to find and how to set up a virtual background in Zoom.
What is a virtual background in Zoom?
To begin with, ZOOM is a cloud platform for video conferences, webinars, and any other online events. In the beginning, the user receives an identifier number and uses it for the particular meetings.
Virtual Background Zoom is a customizable background in the form of the proposed options as “wallpaper” or your chosen image.
It can be, for example, the logo of your company or any other picture that the user prefers. This virtual background is constantly visible to everyone who participates in a video conference with you.
Steps for setting a virtual background in Zoom
- Launch Zoom on your computer/phone/tablet and click on the “Settings” option. There you will see the “Virtual Background” tab.
- Now, you will see the backgrounds already configured automatically. To select one of them, simply click on the desired image and then confirm the selection.
- If you prefer to put your chosen image, download it first from the websites of the developers, and click “+ Add Image”. Now, you can select the photo or graphic image of your choice.
- Zoom notifies that the virtual background looks best if it has a video format. In most cases, this is a 16: 9 size. Therefore, we recommend that you crop the photo in advance to the desired aspect ratio so that the quality does not deteriorate.
- If you want to activate the background only during the conference, click the circumflex icon (that is ^), and then click on “Select virtual background”.
For better image quality, pay attention to uniform illumination, this will make the process more pleasant and easier for your colleagues.
We have prepared 3 online resources on which you can download and create a wide variety of virtual Zoom backgrounds.
The first thing to start with is to find a suitable image by format and size by following these tips:
- High-quality images with a high resolution of 1280 × 720 pixels and an aspect ratio of 16: 9.
- In case the background image contains text, uncheck the box “Mirror my video” in the video settings.
- Zoom also offers the option of using video as a virtual background in MP4 or MOV file format, a minimum resolution of 360p, and a maximum of 1080p.
As a background, you can use absolutely any image. If you are planning a vacation, you can put yourself on a tropical beach, or move to an aristocratic mansion with Baroque architecture, or even put a panorama of California landscapes.
You can also use your photo as a screen saver for audio conferencing. In this case, the interlocutors will hear you and see your portrait on the screen. For such purposes, it is best to choose a photo that looks more like a business portrait than a family photo from a vacation. If you do not have such an image, it is totally possible to create one. In order to touch up a portrait, you can use the retouching service.
Many companies offer the development of special backgrounds for video calls, among which you can choose the screensaver of your favorite series, such as “Game of Thrones” or extremely popular now “Money Heist”.
Platforms with free virtual backgrounds:
- Modsy Blog – images collected for lovers of chic interiors and fans of pop culture series. If you want to work in the atmosphere of an apartment from the series Friends or Golden Girls, this platform has developed high-quality pictures, and all you have to take care of is to download them to your computer and upload them to Zoom in “Settings” option.
- Unsplash – this service is known for its vivid number of images for every taste. You can find photos of the majestic mountains of Norway, a modern lounge area, or a view of your favorite city. For a quick search, you need to enter words that clearly describe the picture you want to find, for example, Interior Design, and enjoy the choice.
- Spark Adobe – to quickly create an image for a virtual background – use ready-made Spark Adobe templates. Choose your favorite option from the collection of professional designs and virtual background templates for Zoom, add and remove any elements, underlays, stickers in a couple of clicks.
The pandemic is unfolding in the era of the Internet, so all meetings, midnight heart-to-heart talks, and even DJ performances flow online. The most popular service for calls against this background was the Zoom video conferencing service, the number of users of which exceeded 200 million per day. We highly recommend downloading it if you haven’t done it yet: the quality of communication there is much better than on Skype.
