This article is reposted here with the consent of the author.  The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position, view, or opinion of Crestron Electronics, Inc., or of any of its employees.   Crestron Electronics is not responsible for, and does not verify the accuracy of, any of the information contained in this article. 

Author: Jimmy Vaughan
https://medium.com/@vaughanjamesr/microsoft-teams-virtual-backgrounds-how-to-enable-and-load-your-own-images-22290c529b20

Today Microsoft® is releasing an update to the Microsoft Teams® desktop application that allows you to do virtual backgrounds. There’s a few tricks that you can use to make sure you have everything you need to have some fun when it's appropriate.
 


First is how to actually see your background images that are available. Microsoft has pre-populated images that you can choose from so the easy part is to follow the diagram of 1, 2, 3 below and you are using your virtual background and hiding what might be in view of your camera.


 

1.  Choose the … more options and you will find where you used to blur your background now says “Show Background Effects”.

2.  Choose that and the window on the right now pops out with your pre-populated images.

3.  Now choose “apply” and other attendees will see your new background. Choose “preview” and it will only be you that sees your new background.

HOW TO GET YOUR OWN IMAGES INTO THE LIST

If you are OK with using the images provided by Microsoft, then you are done. But you can do more and import your own images as well. All you need are some good images and I wrote a blog post about some images that you can use here.

You are going to have to navigate to the location below to start.
****because the AppData folder is a hidden folder you will need to enable that to get to this file location***
C:\Users\{user account}\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Teams\Backgrounds\Uploads



Once you have loaded your images, you will just need to hide the background images and then load the images again and your new selection will appear.