(Credit: Shutterstock / Yalcin Sonat)
What you see in the mirror isn’t always what shows up when you join a virtual meeting using your computer’s webcam. Now, Google is making it easier to give your appearance a bit of a touch-up in Google Meet meetings with the addition of new filters to its desktop app.
Google first rolled out the filters to its mobile app last year. Options include two filters: subtle and smoothing. They work like two different levels of essentially the same thing. The subtle option will give you a little complexion smoothing, eye whitening, and under-eye lighting, while the smoothing filter will kick all those things up a notch. In both cases, the goal is just to make you look a bit more like yourself in the video, not dramatically change your appearance.
Google says the update “has been highly requested by our users” as a way for them to feel more comfortable and confident in their appearance during video calls.
If you’d like to take the new filters for spin, go to Settings > Apply visual effects > Appearance > Portrait touch-up. Then select which of the filters you’d like to apply.
The feature is slowly rolling out now and is available for Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Teaching & Learning Upgrade customers as well as individual Google One and Google Workspace subscribers.