How to set a webcam icon. Free program for laptop web camera

There are times when the camera on our laptop simply does not work. Either it is not yet configured for a new acquisition, or the one that previously worked has stopped working. Here is a list of options when you may not be satisfied with the camera on a laptop:

Often, when buying a new laptop, the camera does not work at all. In this case, it needs to be configured.
Your camera is not working quite correctly, that is, the image is upside down, the picture is colorless, and so on.
Sometimes there were cases when the camera worked in normal mode, but the picture quality left much to be desired.
Your camera works flawlessly, but you want to expand its functionality. For example, take a photo or trim a video.

There are many more problems that users face when using a webcam, but these are the most common.

How to get a webcam to work on a new laptop

If you have never used the camera on your laptop before, but want to do so, first make sure that it is installed as equipment in your software. To do this, we do the following:

On the desktop, right-click on the “My Computer” icon, from the list that appears, find and select the “Manage” item.
In the left column you should notice the “Device Manager” directory - click on it, after which in the right column we mark with a cross the inscription “Image processing devices”. If the camera is installed, then in theory it should be in this directory.

In any case, whether it is there or not, you need to perform the steps indicated in the paragraph “universal treatment procedures” (This is installing or replacing drivers for your webcam).

— In order to remove all drivers, repeat the procedure indicated above, then double-click on the name of your camera and click the “Delete” button in the “Driver” tab. Then we confirm the deletion.

- If you don't have drivers or you just uninstalled them, you should install new ones. To do this, insert the driver disk into the laptop and install the driver packages from the “Webcam” folder. The disk should come with the laptop itself, but if it is missing, download all the drivers from the official website of the laptop manufacturer.

How to fix problems with the camera not working correctly (image upside down, etc.).

Often the cause of such confusion is a bug in the drivers. Therefore, follow the procedure indicated above. If installing new drivers does not help, contact service center, whereas this is already a problem with the equipment.

How to make the picture quality on the camera better (if it is disgusting).

The quality of the picture is already a problem with the camera itself, so you need to either replace it or buy a new webcam at any electronics store. There you will already select the quality you need.

How to Expand Your Camera's Functionality

To do this you will need to install special programs. Often this is software that you can download from the official suppliers of your operating systems.

You purchased a mini computer, installed the operating system, want to take a photo, but it doesn’t work.

The reason is that you need a laptop webcam program. Pre-installed Windows 7, XP or 8 usually (but not always) have it, but if you install it yourself, it doesn’t.

To be honest, finding a free, simple program on the Internet to take photos from a laptop’s web camera is not easy.

They write the names, you enter the site and there is nothing similar there - no - just nonsense. You have to flip through dozens of pages until you find something.

But don’t be sad, in this article (a little lower) there is a direct link to download a free program for a web camera on a computer or laptop to later take a photo.

It is in Russian, simple, small and at the same time very effective (fast) - it satisfies almost everyone (read the comments).

You can download a free webcam program for your laptop at the very end of this page. Since the installation happens as usual, I won’t describe it, but I’ll say a few words about how to use it.

How to use: instructions

Launch it (the shortcut should be on the desktop). You should see a window like the one below:

First, let's set up your webcam, to do this, as shown above, click “setup”. Here you can adjust the brightness and format in which your photos will be, but we are interested in something else, the storage location (otherwise you won’t find your photo later).

In addition to photos, you can also record video. There is also a good free program for this in Russian.

To do this, as shown in the figure below, click on the icon under the line “directory for saving images”. A new window will appear in front of you.

In it, on the left side, find “desktop”, select it and click “OK”. Now the web camera will save all your photos on the desktop of your laptop.

Now you can start using the webcam through your laptop for its intended purpose. To do this, click “take photo” in the webcam.

Everything will go automatically for a long time. The web camera will save what it sees and place it on. But this is not its only function; if you press start, then at specified intervals it will independently (for free) photograph everything that catches your eye (depending on where it is directed).

We can finish here. In my opinion, every user can figure it out with minimal knowledge. After all, here is a link not only from where to download a free program for a laptop web camera, but also detailed instructions with pictures on how to use it.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this is best program for laptop web camera. It is free, very, very small, simple, in Russian and the photos are of high quality. What else does a beginner need?

Of course, there are better quality web cameras for laptops, but they are usually paid, 100 times larger and not always in Russian, although with the ability to do special ones. effects.

Developer URL:
http://ddd-soft.net.ru/

OS:
XP, Windows 7, 8, 10

Interface:
Russian

N. Romodanov

Original: "Add A Customizable Webcam Widget To Your Desktop With The Simple & Lightweight CamDesk"
Author: Yaara Lancet
Publication date: June 15, 2012
Translation: N. Romodanov
Transfer date: June 2012

Webcams are cool. There really is no limit to what you can do with a webcam. The camera may not be as exciting as it once was, but it is still one of the most useful devices I own. One thing I find strange about webcams is the lack of flexibility in how they can be used.

How can I make sure that I see on my work what comes from my webcam, regardless of what I am doing? What should I do if I don’t like sitting stupidly in a video chat and staring at the chat client?

Not long ago I came across the CamDesk program. It's a tiny app with open source code, which offers a really simple solution to the problems mentioned above using a webcam. With CamDesk, you can get a constant stream of data from any of your webcams into a customizable window, so you can keep an eye on everything happening in front of your webcam, no matter what you're doing. The program can be used for any purpose: from tracking your cats and watching your front door to constantly broadcasting your image in a video chat or recording a video. Fabulous!

Installing CamDesk

CamDesk is an open source project that is still being developed by several independent developers. As such, it is magnificent in its simplicity, but in some places it is unfinished. CamDesk is reported to be available for Windows, Linux, Chrome and Android systems, but as for the last two implementations, they are still far from the end of the development stage, and even the developers themselves do not recommend downloading them.

If you are using a Linux system, when you download the tarball, you will find installation instructions in it. With your permission, I'm on this moment I'll stick to the version for Windows systems. To install CamDesk for Windows, you must have the .NET Framework 4 installed. That's all you really need to install CamDesk (assuming you have 1.17 MB of free space on your hard drive, of course).

CamDesk is a portable application and there is no installation process as such. Just unzip the files and run EXE file. Now you're ready to try out some webcam features!

Using CamDesk

If you have more than one webcam connected to your computer, then the first thing you need to do is select the camera that you want to use to constantly broadcast the video signal. Unfortunately, the camera cannot be changed inside CamDesk, and there is no other option than to restart CamDesk every time you want to change the video source. Since it's a very small and fast app, reloading it shouldn't cause too many headaches.

Now that you've selected your source, a video feed should appear on your desktop. It looks something like this:

After you've combed your hair (which I couldn't seem to do), you can start a video chat or start video recording, or just surf the web and see yourself at the same time if you want. You can move the video window by dragging it with the mouse and place it in a less visible place on the desktop. Click on the video right click mouse to access some additional options.

From the menu that opens, you can start and stop the video, switch to full screen mode, access additional settings and stop the CamDesk application. Each operation has its own hotkeys, if you prefer to use them, of course. Let's see what additional settings are in store for us.

This is Bibi, my old cat, who I'm trying to monitor using my other webcam. In the window additional settings, although it looks a little unattractive, it offers several useful settings. Here you can dock the video window and make it always appear on the screen on top of other windows, or undocking and make it behave exactly like other windows. You can also resize the video image to suit your liking and you can also change its transparency.

This last option will be interesting if you want to monitor yourself or someone else while doing something else and don't want the video image to obscure anything valuable on the screen. To do this, you can set the video image to be semi-transparent so you won't lose sight of it.

If you have an external webcam, no matter what you do on your computer, you can never lose sight of the object you're watching. This way I can write this post and keep an eye on whether my cat is awake.

How can I make sure that I see on my work what comes from my webcam, regardless of what I am doing? What should I do if I don’t like sitting stupidly in a video chat and staring at the chat client?

Not long ago I came across the program. It's a tiny open source app that offers a really simple solution to the webcam problems mentioned above. With CamDesk, you can get a constant stream of data from any of your webcams into a customizable window, so you can keep an eye on everything happening in front of your webcam, no matter what you're doing. The program can be used for any purpose: from tracking your cats and watching your front door to constantly broadcasting your image in a video chat or recording a video. Fabulous!

Installing CamDesk

If you are using a Linux system, when you download the tarball, you will find installation instructions in it. With your permission, for now I will focus on the version for the Windows system. To install CamDesk for Windows, you must have the .NET Framework 4 installed. That's all you really need to install CamDesk (assuming, of course, you have 1.17 MB of free space on your hard drive).

CamDesk is a portable application and there is no installation process as such. Just extract the files and run the EXE file. Now you're ready to try out some webcam features!

Using CamDesk

Now that you've selected your source, a video feed should appear on your desktop. It looks something like this:

Once you've combed your hair (which I couldn't seem to do), you can start a video chat or start video recording, or just surf the web and see yourself at the same time if you want. You can move the video window by dragging it with the mouse and place it in a less visible place on the desktop. Right-click on the video to access some additional options.

From the menu that opens, you can start and stop videos, switch to full screen mode, access advanced settings, and stop the CamDesk app. Each operation has its own hotkeys, if you prefer to use them, of course. Let's see what additional settings are in store for us.

This is Bibi, my old cat, who I'm trying to monitor using my other webcam. The advanced settings window, although a little unattractive, offers several useful settings. Here you can dock the video window and make it always appear on the screen on top of other windows, or undocking and make it behave exactly like other windows. You can also resize the video image to suit your liking and you can also change its transparency.

You're sitting comfortably with your laptop, hoping to chat with a friend in Skype, and the program reports that the WEB camera is unavailable. Do not rush to get upset, as this does not mean that your laptop requires repair. It is quite possible that the WEB camera is disabled and you just need to connect it. It is not difficult at all and does not require any special skill or time.

Instructions for turning on the WEB camera

First of all, check if the WEB camera is turned on

To do this, run the program that controls the work WEB cameras. Or run the camera test directly from the client program window. If after startup the image does not appear on the screen and the menu items are unavailable, then you should connect the camera as a device.

Find the key on your keyboard labeled "Fn"

It is usually located on the left side of the keyboard next to " Ctrl" Keystroke " Fn» allows you to use other function keys that control devices. They are usually marked in blue and are located in the top row of the keyboard. Using this key you can turn on the WEB camera. Take a close look at the keyboard and find the WEB camera icon. Press the " Fn"and, holding it, press the second key with the WEB camera icon. A picture of the WEB camera with the inscription “ On" The camera is ready to use.

We achieve this using standard Windows tools

From the menu that appears after pressing the " Start", select " Control Panel", and in it find the tab " Administration" and double-click on it with the mouse. Find the shortcut in the window " Computer management" and open a console window. On the left side of the window, find the snap-in " Equipment Manager" and run it.

Structured list of computer devices

Open the nested list under the "+" icon in the " line Imaging device" In this list you will see the name of your camera. Right-click on it and select from the proposed menu “ Turn on" All you have to do is click the button “ OK" to confirm activation. If you do not find the WEB camera icon in the device manager list, you may need to reinstall the WEB camera driver.