Chrome Can: Webcamtoy

Want to take pictures like you can on a Mac using Photobooth? You can on a Chromebook using a fantastic app called WebCamToy! With over 80 fun effects and filters to use the fun never ends! Works with your web camera and enables you to take creative pictures for school projects! Students can also download, or post to Twitter, Tumbler or Facebook directly from the web app. To access this amazing application have your students go to https://webcamtoy.com/ and begin taking fun pics for their school projects!

To use this app all you need to do is click the Ready? Smile! button. Then you will need to allow access to your camera. Remember that Webcam Toy will not secretly record you. The photos you take are private until you choose to share them.

You will then end up on the main page where you can adjust settings and begin the process of choosing the filter you want to use. As mentioned above there are over 80 fun effects. See examples below. The settings allow you to change how the image looks, whether or not you want a flash or a countdown timer and if the app is in fullscreen mode or not. If you are taking pictures of text make sure that Mirror is unchecked so that it will read properly. This makes it useful when taking pictures of students work to add to their ePortfolios. Square allows the image to be taken in a square format used for social media posts. Countdown allows you to turn on or off the countdown before the actual image is taken. Flash enables or disables an on-screen flash effect that makes your screen white to show that a picture has been taken (this does nothing to help the actual image quality, so make sure you have enough light in the room). Full screen makes the app fullscreen. You can exit by pressing the ESC key.

Once you get your settings the way you want them, you then need to select the effect you would like to use. You can either flip through the effects by using the arrows or you can click on the word Normal to see multiple effects at the same time. In this mode, you will use the arrows to flip through multiple pages of effect. Click on the one you want and then click the camera button to take a picture. After you have taken the picture you can either click the back button to do it again or if you like the photo you took you can download it or post it to social media directly.