Bringing your best self to a meeting is key to making a positive impression and fostering meaningful connections. However, common challenges of a remote work environment, such as poor lighting conditions and cluttered backgrounds, can hinder your ability to show up in the way you want to be seen and can prevent you from communicating with other participants effectively.
Fortunately, Google Meet offers a variety of features and tools designed to overcome these challenges and help you look and feel your best. From expressing yourself with custom backgrounds to automatically adjusting your video feed to ensure all participants can see you clearly, we’ve rounded up the features you can leverage from your laptop, computer or mobile device to help you feel confident, represented and connected in video meetings.
Sounding your best is also important for ensuring clear and effective communication in remote meetings. We dive deeper into this topic in another blog post as part of our three-part “Bringing your best self to Google Meet” series. The series also includes a dedicated blog post about how to look and sound your best when joining a call from a meeting room with Google Meet Hardware. You can read both blog posts here:
Virtual backgrounds
Virtual backgrounds enable you to eliminate distractions and add privacy – or fun – to your calls. You can choose to blur your background, select a static or animated image curated by Google or upload your own. Admins can also provide a set of custom backgrounds for everyone in your organisation to use, helping to create a more professional and consistent brand image during meetings. These backgrounds could include your company logo, show off your office or feature high-quality images of your products and services.
For something truly unique, ask Gemini to generate a custom AI-generated background* based on a prompt describing what you’d like to see, such as “An illustration of a magical forest”. You can also choose from a list of styles, like “Photography” or “3D animation”, to customise the image even further. Gemini will generate multiple suggestions based on your prompt and you can pick your favourite.
If you’re joining a meeting from a mobile device, try Google’s range of 360-degree video backgrounds to transport yourself to a beach, a temple – or just about anywhere else. These backgrounds move with you as you move your device for a more dynamic and engaging meeting experience.
Video effects
Filters and styles provide another way to add fun and creativity into your meetings. Transform into a 🐱 cat, 👽 alien, 🐰 rabbit and more, or experiment with various light and colour filters like “greyscale”, “cloudy day” and “sunlight”.
Portrait touch-up enables you to subtly enhance your appearance before or during meetings with complexion smoothing, under-eye lightening and eye whitening. It has two modes – “Subtle” and “Smoothing” – and is available on both web and mobile.
Google Meet lets you combine multiple video effect types for even further customisation. Get creative and apply a background, filter, style and a portrait touch-up mode at the same time to create your ideal look whilst keeping your surroundings private. As you apply effects, a layer icon will appear on your video tile to help you track the number of effects you’re using.
Video quality and framing
If you have a 1080p camera, Meet will prompt you to send your video feed in the higher resolution option before joining a meeting. The 1080p option is off by default and can be toggled on and off via the Meet settings menu. It is only used if at least one other participant has pinned your feed on a screen large enough to display the full 1080p video feed; otherwise, it will lower the resolution to save on bandwidth.
If you’re too far away from your camera or not centred in your video tile, Meet is able to frame your video before you join a meeting. This ensures you are clearly visible and are represented equally alongside other participants. The camera framing adjustment is made only once to avoid distractions. However, if you move around during the meeting and are no longer centred, you can manually recentre yourself from the Meet settings to stay well-positioned in your frame.
When using a camera that has built-in framing modes, like the Logitech Rally Bar Huddle or the Poly Studio P15, the device can dynamically adjust its focus to keep you in view as you move around during the meeting. This eliminates the need to manually reframe yourself each time you change positions, making it easier for other participants to see your facial expressions at all times and reducing the amount of empty background space.
AI enhancements
The automatic light adjustment feature allows Meet to detect and adjust underexposed video feeds, making sure you can be seen clearly and remain well-lit throughout the call. It can be particularly useful in instances where you have too much light behind you, such as a window on a sunny day, and your camera is struggling to capture your face clearly.
Gemini’s studio look* feature enhances your appearance in meetings by using AI to automatically increase sharpness. This helps ensure that you are always in focus, even in low-light conditions or when using low-quality webcams.
Studio lighting* brings adjustable settings for lighting position, brightness and colour into Meet. You can use these settings to mimic studio-quality lighting and present yourself in the best way possible during a meeting.
Discover More Tips on Looking and Sounding Your Best in Google Meet
Want to know how you can sound your best in remote meetings? The second instalment of our “Bringing your best self to Google Meet” series explores features like noise cancellation, adaptive audio, dial-in and dial-out capabilities and much more to help you deliver clear and professional audio. You can read it here.
As part of this series, we also cover how to look and sound your best from a meeting room with Google Meet Hardware. Specifically, we explore how to create a professional meeting space that is fit for purpose and round up all of the device- and software-based features that can help you feel more connected and represented in video meetings. You can read the full blog post here.
*These features require select Gemini for Google Workspace add-ons. Compare the Gemini add-ons here.