1. A video-telephony system comprising: a video capture unit having a first video signal as output; a user interface; a style selector responsive to the user interface and having a first style description as output; a network transmitter that transmits the first style description and the first video signal over a network to a recipient terminal; a network receiver that receives a second style description and a second video signal from the network; a style generator that modifies presentation of the second video signal in accordance with the second style description to produce a modified video signal; and a video display; wherein the first and second style descriptions define at least one style property selected from the group of style properties consisting of: a cropping region, a border style, an image filter, a background, and an animation.