(logo revs) (logo chiming) – Are you wanting toadd a virtual background to your Zoom meeting? Do you wanna add somethinga little flashy like this, or perhaps you wanna add some branding like your logo in theupper left-hand corner? Well, in today's video, I wanna show you everything you need to know about virtual backgrounds in Zoom.
I also wanna show you how to create your own custom background using a tool that you probably already haveinstalled on your computer.
Hello, everyone.
Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get moredone and enjoy less stress, and I think perhaps the number one reason for using virtual backgrounds in Zoom is that it hides whateverelse is going on behind you, but let's get startedwith some prerequisites, and some of you have been asking me why don't I see thisvirtual background option.
I'm gonna include a linkin the description below for all of the prerequisitesso you can check them yourself, but really the number one reason is that it comes down toyour processing speed.
So depending on what machine you are using for Zoom conferencing if you don't have a fast enough processor you might not have virtualbackground capability, but let's make sure that you have virtual backgrounds enabled, and in order to do so you wannago into your Zoom account, and this is where you would login as a part of your desktop browser, right? You wanna log into yourfull Zoom meeting account, and under your account settings we wanna go down to the Admin section.
We wanna click on Account Settings which is under Account Management, Admin, Account Management, Account Settings, and then we wanna scroll down to almost halfway down this page.
We wanna find the subheadingwhich says In Meeting Advanced.
There's the subheading.
If we scroll down just a littlebit further, there you go.
You're gonna see Virtual background.
You gotta make sure that this is turned on in order for you to see that option in order for you toupload your own images.
So once that is thecase, you wanna go back to your Zoom desktop client.
You wanna open up Zoomwithin your computer, hit this little gear icon, and here we have a numberof different settings.
Now you may think it's under Video here, and if you have virtualbackground turned on, you'll see it here, but this is not actually where you upload or adjust your virtualbackground settings.
You wanna come down hereto Virtual Background, and here you can play around.
They do have a few couple of presets here that you can toy around with.
If you do want a videobackground, you can do so as well.
Here you can see I've got theNorthern Lights behind me.
Just be wary, of course, a video background is gonnatake us that much more bandwidth and that much moreprocessing speed as well.
So you might be saferwith using a static image such as this.
Now once you've downloadeda background that you like, all you need to do isselect this plus button here to add an image or video.
You need to tell it whichone that you're adding.
If I say Add image, I can just go find the imagethat I want, uploaded here, and now I can go ahead and start using that virtual background.
However, you're probablysaying to yourself, “What if I want somethinga little more custom? “What if I want to adjust a few things? “What if I want to add a logo, Scott, “like you have in yourvirtual background?” Well, you might be surprised to learn that I've created my custom backgrounds, and in fact, I've createdan awful lot of my graphics over the years in somethingcalled PowerPoint.
Yeah, just basic run-of-the-millMicrosoft PowerPoint.
I just find it's a very easytool to manipulate images, move things around andcreate these types of things.
So here you can see I've gotmy custom background here, but let me show you how I made it and how you can make your own as well.
The nice thing about PowerPoint is that you're gonna have a canvas like this which is 16-by-9 ratio which is pretty standardfor most of our web cams and what you're going towant to upload as well.
The next thing that youwanna do is go online and actually find an image that you like.
Now a place that I go for anumber of royalty free images is a website called Pexels.
com, and I actually typed ina little bit earlier, I just even typed in Zoom backgrounds, and you can filter by colorand that type of thing as well.
But found something a little colorful here that I thought I'd liketo try, this one here.
Looks like, almost looks like some kind of maybe traffic lights behind glass with some rain.
I typically recommend thatyou choose a background that is darker in color, and the main reason isthat you're gonna see fewer ghosting lines between yourself and the background image, right? You're not gonna see thoselittle white separation lines as it tries to figure outwhere you end and the rest of the room or the restof the background begins.
So I'm gonna click on this image here, and whether you go to Pexels, whether you just go to Google Images, wherever you find yourimage, in most cases all you need to do isright click on the image, and then say Copy image.
You can do this withalmost any image online.
I'm just gonna say Copy image.
I'm gonna come back into PowerPoint, and I'm just gonna paste thatimage here onto my canvas.
Now you can see thatit's not exactly 16 by 9.
So what I'm gonna do is I'mjust gonna drag it over here, and then I'm gonna take thecorner and just sort of pull it out of it so it covers the entire space, and now I can bringthis up a bit if I want, if I want that to be alittle more centered here.
I can go up to Pictureformat and actually make sure it's aligned center and alignedin the middle like that.
So now it's over my entire canvas.
You can see a bit of a previewhere on the left-hand side.
Now what I could do is nowgo ahead and use this image.
I could have gone straight from Pexels and just downloaded theimage if I just wanted to go with this image all together, but I wanna add something to it, and that's what I use PowerPoint for.
At this stage, I wanna input my logo like you see on one of these slides here.
Now instead of just copying it here, all you need to do is go up to Insert.
Let's pretend that I don'thave it in this file already.
Just say Insert, selectPictures, save from This Device.
In most cases, it's something that you've downloadto your device already, and here I've got atransparent version of my logo.
You may not have a transparentversion, and that's okay.
You can use something else that you have or something else that you want to use, but I'm gonna use my transparent logo.
I'm gonna double click on that which is good to bringit in to PowerPoint, but that is way too big.
I don't want that onmy virtual background.
So again, I'm just gonna dragthe corner down to a size that I think is maybe alittle more appropriate.
I'm gonna bring it up hereto the top left corner.
Now I recommend that youuse the top left corner if you decide to addsome branding or a logo or anything else that you're adding to your virtual background.
The reason is this.
At the bottom of the screen, two reasons.
Number one, people'snames will appear here in the bottom left-hand corner, but number two, andthis may be more obvious is that you and your lower body, right, like your chest and shoulders, are going to be appearing here.
So it's gonna block out most things that you have in thelower part of the frame.
So you want it up top, but the reason why Irecommend the top left corner is that in the right-hand side when other Zoom participantshover over your video, you're gonna see two blue buttons here.
You're gonna see the mute/unmute button, and you're also gonnasee a more button here which would cover up anything that is presented on this side.
So just to make sure thatit never gets covered up, you can put that logo oryou can put that image in the top left-hand corner.
Now, the last thingthat we're gonna do here is we're gonna actuallygo into full-screen mode as if we're giving a presentation as if we're giving aPowerPoint presentation and I'm gonna hit Print Screen.
Now I actually have an additional tool that I use here to capturesmaller parts of my screen, but if you don't have such a tool, hitting Print Screen is just gonna capture the entire screen in front of you.
It's actually copied to the clipboard.
So now we can go anywhereelse that we want to.
I use another very simpletool called Microsoft Paint.
Yes, something else that isprobably already installed in your computer, and hereI'm just gonna paste it.
I'm just gonna paste it here within Paint.
The reason why I bring it in here is that it is so easy justto go to File, Save as, and now I can choose thefile type, the picture type, that I want to save this file as, and in most cases, youwanna look at something like PNG or a JPEG.
PNG is often the highestquality that might be available to you in your default program.
So I'm gonna say save as PNG picture.
That's gonna bring something up here.
I'm gonna call this says Zoom sample.
Let's call this Zoomsample two, how about that? And I'm gonna save that to my desktop, and now all we need to do.
I can close this now.
We can leave this PowerPoint back open.
I'm gonna go back intomy Zoom meetings here.
I'm gonna open up my settings.
Come back down to Virtual background, and let's add this backgroundthat we just created together.
I'm gonna hit Plus, Add image.
There is Zoom sample two, and, hey, yeah, I better watchout for the, I don't know, the ambulance or thevehicle behind me there, and it turns out prettygood, there you can see.
There's not too much ghostingor shadowing happening amongst my hair or my shouldersor anything of that nature.
Now if for some reasonthings have been uploaded in the wrong degree, right, if it's rotated in the wrong area, you can come up here andselect Rotate 90 degrees and push things arounduntil it finds the one that is right for you.
The other thing that youwanna pay careful attention to is this mirror my video.
If this is checked, as you cansee my logo is now backwards, and that is certainly notwhat I want others to see.
So you may just have to toggle this depending on how it uploaded to Zoom.
I'm gonna uncheck that so that my logo comesacross nice and clear.
The other check box, youwanna pay special attention to is that if you're notusing a green screen, do not check this box.
This box is only for a green screen only.
Why? 'Cause you're gonna looksomething crazy like this.
So do not check that box unless you have an actual green screen, and for most of us, we don'thave a green screen available or something that we don'twanna put up from time to time.
Again, if you have properlighting in front of you against your face and if it'ssomewhat darker behind you or at least an even color behind you, you are going to get the best results here within Zoom virtual backgrounds.
Well, I hope that you foundtoday's video helpful, and if you have further questions about Zoom virtual backgrounds or anything related to Zoom meetings, be sure to let me know inthe comments down below.
Thank you so much forwatching and remember being productive doesnot need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
.
