Webcam Photo Booth

How to use the photo booth

1. Press Start camera and allow access when your browser asks. If you have several cameras, choose one in the Camera list.
2. Pick a Filter. The live preview shows the effect straight away, so you can frame your shot with it.
3. Set the Timer to give yourself time to get into position: Off, 3 seconds, 5 seconds or 10 seconds. A big countdown appears on the preview.
4. Press Take photo (or the space bar). The screen flashes and the picture goes into the Gallery.
5. Tick Photo strip (4 shots) for the classic booth experience: after the timer, four photos are taken two seconds apart and assembled into one vertical strip on a white card, with the date underneath. Cancel stops a countdown or a strip in progress.
6. Under each picture, press PNG or JPEG to download it, or Delete to remove it. Delete all empties the gallery.

The filters

Each filter is applied to the real pixels of the photo when it is captured, not just to the preview:

• Black & white converts to greyscale with the standard luminance weights (21 % red, 72 % green, 7 % blue), the way the eye perceives brightness.
• Sepia gives the brown tone of early 20th-century prints.
• Negative inverts every colour, like a film negative.
• Warm adds an orange glow, flattering for skin tones and cosy indoor light.
• Cool adds a blue cast for a crisp, wintry look.
• Vintage combines a light sepia, softer contrast, a warm tint and darkened corners, like an old instant photo.

The filters use the same definitions as CSS filters. The browser draws the video frame on a canvas with the filter active; in browsers that don’t support canvas filters, this tool computes the same colour matrix itself, pixel by pixel, so photos look alike everywhere. The warm, cool and vintage tints are blended with the soft-light mode, which colours mid-tones while keeping highlights and shadows.

PNG or JPEG?

PNG is lossless: the photo is saved exactly as captured, but the file is large (often 1 to 3 MB for a 720p picture). JPEG is compressed at high quality (92 %), usually five to ten times smaller, with no visible difference for photos. Choose JPEG to send by email or message, and PNG if you plan to edit the picture.

Mirror image

Mirror image is ticked by default, because people expect to see themselves as in a mirror, and photos are saved the way you see them in the preview. Untick it before shooting if there is text in the picture (a T-shirt, a sign) that must be readable, or if you want the photo the way others see you.

Tips for better photos

Face a window or a lamp rather than having the light behind you. Put the camera at eye level and look into the lens, not at the screen. Webcams produce sharper, less noisy images in good light, and most of them deliver 720p or 1080p.