Home Cooking

Decent lighting is essential when wanting to exude professionalism in a video call. But sometimes you either don’t have equipment at hand or don’t want to mess with it. As a stopgap, I’ve discovered that if I open up a few browser windows with light backgrounds they can help illuminate my face, but the results are a bit bluer than I’d otherwise prefer.

It got me thinking if I could build a simple website that would be nothing but an adjustable color background. Behold, the webcam light tool. Not only is the color adjustable via HSL (hue, saturation, lightness) sliders, there’s also a slider in Kelvin if you want to pick a color temperature instead. Color values are saved to browser local storage and remembered on subsequent visits, and automatically synchronize in real-time if you open multiple windows.

With a pair of tall and narrow windows, one on either edge of my ultrawide monitor, the results are pretty good. Chalk one up for creative solutions!