How To Improve Laptop Camera Quality

If your webcam footage is night, grainy, or by and large just not that precipitous, yous're in the right place. You don't have to blitz out to get a new $200 device.

These 5 tips will drastically ameliorate your image quality for Zoom, Twitch, or YouTube videos and make even some of the cheapest webcams look like professional cameras. 4 of these tips are completely gratuitous and y'all can implement them right now! I've also included video footage of a few of these in activity.

On the left is what appears when using Zoom by itself. The image on the right has improved webcam settings and a LUT applied in OBS.

one. Studio Lighting

Using bright and soft lights will allow your webcam to reproduce colors more accurately, provide a clearer image, and reduce graininess. Lighting is the most direct, merely nevertheless the most disregarded factor in regards to image quality.

By soft low-cal, I mean light that diffuses evenly so it does not cast harsh shadows or hot spots. I currently utilise an Elgato Ring Light (my review), but I've reviewed several other lighting kits on this site. Even if you simply take admission to a lamp, that volition yet boost your video'due south advent. Employ what you take. And the residue of these tips y'all can do on a $0 budget.

Two Elgato Key Light Airs and one Cardinal Light in the eye.

Limostudio Umbrella Light Kit.

two. Sunlight

Recording outside in the sun, just you can just tape facing a window.

Illuminate your shot with the sunday. No really, the bright and even light provided past the sun puts artifical light to shame. Plus it'south free! If you lot don't accept the actress cash for a new lighting kit and a $thou camera, yous tin accept professional looking video and pictures with just your phone.

Even if you already have expensive lights, webcams benefit greatly shooting in the day time because concentrated studio lights can cause them to overexpose your subject area and make the background super night.

The dominicus brightens up the rest of your background to give your shot a much more than even wait. Remember that the sun'due south color temperature and effulgence changes throughout the day, and so if your only source of low-cal is the sun, trying to edit multiple shoots together into 1 video will pb to inconsistent lighting. Fortunately, my final tip tin help mitigate that.

iii. Lighting placement

Unboxing my Elgato Ring Low-cal.

Brand sure your brightest light source is in front end of you - not behind yous or to the sides. Have you ever watched a video or taken a pic where the subject field is super dark every bit if they were covered by a shadow fifty-fifty though the setting is blindingly bright? That's considering the subject themselves is casting the shadow themselves.

When you stand in forepart of a light source, your photographic camera can only really do one of 2 things:

• adjust the exposure for the bright light behind yous - making you nighttime OR

• betrayal for you lot, simply causing the background to engulf the entire shot in a luminous spark.

Make sure the light source is facing the front of the subject area. So if you're using the low-cal from the window, face the window. This is probably the number 1 lighting mistake fabricated by new Twitch streamers and YouTubers.

Camera exposing for the background, making the subject besides dark

Camera exposing for the subject, creating a catholic halo

Just correct! (minus the mess)

Power tip: At night, also consider using an extra light to illuminate your background. This helps webcams betrayal the entire shot properly without your face looking like information technology is glowing due more than light being on it than everything around y'all. The background lite doesn't have to be super bright or expensive - it merely needs to even out the shot.

Night fourth dimension with 2 Elgato Key Light Airs

Night time with two Elgato Key Calorie-free Arrogance and back lights

iv. Transmission recording settings

Manually adjust your exposure, white balance and ISO/gain values. I'll exist demonstrating these settings in OBS. To utilise your webcam with these improved settings in Zoom or other streaming software, here's my guide.

Even when your low-cal is on indicate, automatic webcam settings don't produce the greatest results. This is something you can fix in a few minutes with some basic tweaks. Whether yous're using the settings on your handheld camera or in streaming software like OBS, ditch equally many automated settings as you can. Autofocus is the merely setting that might require some experience with before you take information technology off.

I have a quick OBS settings guide on this site to get you started, but here's the short of information technology. The three settings to focus on at the get-go are exposure, ISO/gain, and white balance.

Exposure is how long the camera lets in calorie-free earlier producing an image. Increasing information technology will immediately make your image expect brighter. Tick this upwardly as high as y'all can without the frame rate dropping or the colors getting washed out.

Keep gain and ISO down equally much as possible. These add grainy fuzz to your prototype. I as well tend to leave the actual "brightness" setting alone as it'south really just a crude levels likewise in most Logitech webcams.

White balance volition decide if the whites if your paradigm look more bluish or orange. Car settings are a nightmare to bargain with when editing because different parts of your video will be radically unlike colors fifty-fifty if yous're sitting in the same spot. Set up information technology to transmission and try to move the slider so that information technology looks how you see it in real life. If yous have adjustable colour temperature lights, you should change the temperature of the lights to what y'all want first and and then fix your white balance.

Example of the Logitech C920 camera settings in OBS

5. Look up Tables (LUTs)

Use Look Up Tables (LUTs) to color grade your image for you. Colour grading is an alteration of an entire epitome'south colour almost similar a filter. I have a short guide on how to apply LUTs in OBS here.

In that location are lots of costless LUTs on the web and the method to apply them in your video editing program will vary slightly. By finding the right ones baked into your video editor or past downloading ones y'all like, you tin better your epitome dramatically.

Even without LUT presets, you lot tin can manually edit the color temperature or brightness of an image in your video editor of selection. This is useful when your recording session with daylight spans unlike hours of the solar day and consequently unlike colors of low-cal.

You can adjust the colors to be the same or merely burnish upward the shot overall. Again, retrieve to apply this footage in Zoom, you'll need OBS VirtualCam (my guide).

In OBS, right click your webcam, click filters so click the + sign on the bottom. Finally, click "Apply LUT".

Instance of a LUT off (left) vs on (correct).

Footage straight from webcam

Color graded prototype with HDR upshot added

These are two images from the aforementioned frame of a video. The first is straight from the camera and was darker than I wanted because of the time of day. In the second epitome I used a bright preset from Cyberlink Powerdirector to make the video popular a bit more than and I added an HDR and sharpness effect to give slightly more definition to edges and shadows.

Summary

Here's how to amend your webcam quality:

ane. Utilize studio lighting like a ring light or LED panel. Even a lamp will assistance.
2. Use daylight as a low-cal source.
3. Brand certain you are facing your brightest light source.
4. Modify your webcam's settings manually.
5. Add LUTs to color grade your footage in real time.

Source: https://www.streamtechreviews.com/blog/improvewebcamquality

Posted by: walkergeop1953.blogspot.com

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