How to setup a Green Screen / Chroma Key on Streamlabs

The main purpose of setting up a green screen on Streamlabs for your Streaming is to separate yourself from the background.

For this, you’ll need a camera, the better resolution, the better result.

Usually, the Logitech C920 HD is more than enough, but if you can use a mirrorless or DSLR camera connected using Elgato camlink or a similar device, you’ll get spectacular results, especially if you have good lighting in your room.

How to set up a Green Screen on Streamlabs Desktop?

All right, so these are the steps you have to follow if you want to properly work with Chroma Key on Streamlabs.

Step 1 – Get your Chroma Ready (including lighting)

The first thing you need to do to get a good result is to physically prepare the room you are streaming from.

The most important thing, of course, is to have a good Green Screen.

The Green Screen by Elgato is one of the most recommended due to its convenience of being able to roll up.

But you’ll find many other (cheaper) options on Amazon.

You could even create your own chroma key using a sheet with a solid color.

Does the chroma key have to be green?

If you don’t like elgato green screen model, or if you want to make a DIY chroma key with a sheet or other cloth, you should know that the color doesn’t have to be green.

You can pick a blue color, and even a magenta one.

The latter tends to be less common though, as chroma keying works erasing a specific color tone of the scene, so you need colors that are very different from your skin tone.

See also  How to Crop a Webcam in Streamlabs (incl. circle shape!)

That’s why you shouldn’t wear anything (clothes, jewelry, or other accessories) of the same color as the chroma.

Lightning and positioning

For getting a good result, you need to light yourself and the background independently, so it’s ideal to have two light sources.

Besides that, you want to avoid shadows on the green screen, otherwise, the green will turn “black”, and Streamlabs will have trouble separating you from the background.

That’s why the best choice is to put the green screen as far as possible from you.

That means that some parts of the frame may be left without green, but we’ll fix that later.

Step 2 – Add the camera source on Streamlabs

The Chroma Key is applied (most of the time) to a camera source (webcam, DSLR, mirrorless)

However, you can also apply this effect to videos or static images! Take that into account when creating your scenes.

In order to add a new camera source:

Click the + Button.

Select “video capture device” and click on “add source”.

Change the name (optional) and click on “Add source” again.

Select the device and resolution, and click on “Done”.

Step 3 – Crop the webcam

If you’ve followed the previous steps of putting the green screen as behind you as possible, you probably now have parts of the frame where you are not surrounded by green.

To fix this, you just need to simply crop the camera.

All you need to do is drag and drop the little squares of the webcam frame, while you keep the ALT KEY pressed.

Do this until the frame has a fully green background.

Step 4 – Apply the Chroma Key Filter

This is the step where you’ll be removing the green background.

All you have to do is just add a filter to the webcam source.

You’ll be able to do this with a right-click on the webcam source > Filters > Edit Filters.

In the new pop-up window that will appear, click on the “Add Filter” button, and within the Filter type dropdown menú, pick the one called “Chroma Key”, you can change the name or leave it as is.

Step 5 – Make adjustments

The Chroma Key is already applied, and probably, you won’t need to do anything else.

However, if you think the result is not good enough, you could make some adjustments here to make it look better.

This will be especially necessary if you used another color than green, as you’ll have to change it on the “Key color Type” dropdown menu.

Chroma Key Settings

It’s impossible to recommend specific settings, as the appropriate values will depend on your lighting, your camera, and your chroma.

You’re going to have to manually change each parameter up and down until you get your perfect balance.

As a help, here’s what these parameters mean:

• Similarity: This tells Streamlabs how similar the green pixels and the background are. The more right you go on the slider, the more it’s going to broaden the range for it to pull out pixels. This means it might start grabbing anything from your skin, your hair, or even your clothes.
• Smoothness: This defines how smooth the pixels are that are being pulled out. The farther to your left, the more jagged edges it’s going to have. The farther to the right, the smoother everything’s going to be, but it’s going to start pulling you out.
• Key color spill reduction: This reduces the amount of green that’s bouncing off your green screen back on your hair, skin, and chair.
• Opacity: This setting will reduce how transparent you are going to be, so most probably 100% is the best choice (no transparency)
• Contrast, Brightness, Gamma: classic settings to the image source

Finishing touches

Your Chroma Key is ready, and you have already removed the green screen from your computer.

Now it’s time to resize your webcam image, and place it wherever you want.

Don’t forget to add a virtual background, so that you are always within a context, and not floating in nothingness.