Webcamoid is a simple but surprisingly versatile webcam suite.

Launch the program and it automatically displays the feed from the default webcam. A transparent toolbar at the bottom of the screen displays just eight icons, including "Settings" and "Information", which looks quite basic. But keep reading...

There's a Camera icon which takes a snapshot of the current screen and saves it as a PNG. Simple, but also quite ordinary.

Then we clicked the "Record video" icon, and found much, much more. Like support for more than 30 formats, including animated GIF. Each of these can be further configured in a vast number of ways, if you understand FFMPEG's switches and low-level video basics. (If not, don't worry, you'll only ever see these options if you go looking.)

Problems with the image? An "Adjust" option enables configuring your device, maybe adjusting the resolution, frame rate, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, sharpness, gamma, white balance and more.

Alternatively, you can just mess around with the picture by applying 60 "effects". There's nothing too surprising or special, it's mostly colour changes and visual transforms, but they're fun to explore.

Life gets even more interesting when you choose the "Sources" button. This enables switching from the default camera to any compatible device you have connected, as well as any of your displays. Select "Screen 0", for instance, and Webcamoid displays your desktop. You can then tweak it, apply effects, take captures or record videos of your desktop, just as you did with the webcam.

There's even an option to create virtual webcam devices to feed other programs, which could give advanced users some interesting options.