I wrote about the Moo businesses cards before, but as it was time to reorder again, I thought I mention them and their new product here.

I’ve been using Moo business cards for quite a while now. You can easily create sets, where every single card has a different photo on the back. So one side is always the same, with the other side showcasing your work. It really looks nice, and you can even choose if you want rounded corners or not, and the type of paper. Here are my new updated ones, where I changed the text color, to fit with the blog colors I’m using since this year :)

The new product Moo has introduced recently, are their Business cards +. On first glance, they look exactly the same as the regular cards (but are a bit pricier :)). But there is one difference. All these cards include a NFC chip inside. So if you touch the card to the back of your phone or tablet, that supports NFC, a defined actions will be performed. This can either be opening a website, add a contact, open an app in the store or forward to different social platform.

This is actually not done directly. Moo stores a link to their website in the card, and that link forwards the user to whatever you want. You can anytime go, login into Moo website and change what the NFC chip does.

Here are my Business cards +, but I made one mistake while creating them. And it was not apparent, until a fellow photographer pointed it out. I forgot to add the NFC logo into the cards design, so if I give the card to someone, and don’t tell them about the NFC, they will have no idea that it’s there. One just sometime has to learn on ones own mistakes :) Will be better next time.

To lean more about Moo cards, and their range of products, please visit their page here Moo.com.

A bit similar photo to the one I posted two days ago, again a brige a reflection and a sunset. But this time regrettably, from the place where one could get a nice view of the bridge, one could not see the sun. It does make the photo a little less colorful. I could have added more color in post-processing, but it would not feel real to me afterwards.

This is a 3 shot HDR, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5, Camera Model: Canon 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 16mm, Aperture: 16, Middle exposure time: 1s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 51.974239, 5.911694

As I mentioned yesterday, today I will show you how to remove dust spots in Lightroom and Photoshop. This is more for the beginners among you, as I hope that the more advanced and pro users know this perfectly. And for those lazy to read, I’m including a 5min video at the end, where I show all I described here :)

Lightroom

In Lightroom the process is quite straightforward. You go into the Develop module, choose Spot removal, choose the size, and then just click on the spots. It will choose a second spot, from where to replace the are you clicked on. You can even click on the selection and move it around, to get a better result.

Still, if you have problems seeing the dust spots in the photo, Lightroom has a handy selection, called Visualize Spots (int the bottom left, visible only when Spot removal is selected). Checking this will change the image showing just the edges. You can also move the slider next to it, to change how detailed the effect is, so you can see more or less, so easily identifying the dust spots.

Photoshop

In photoshop you can use either the:
– Spot healing brush tool – select it, choose content aware in the top selection, and just brush over the dust spots
– Healing brush tool – select it, Alt + click on an similar area without a dust spot and than paint over the dust spot (similar to clone stamp tool)
– Patch tool – select it, drag a selection around the dust spot and then drag the selection onto a clean area

These all are in the same group on the tools menu, and mostly provide the same results. But there are instances, where you are better with using some of them. Especially when repairing and areas with patterns, lines or texture, you are better off using the patch tool, and dragging your selection onto a spot with similar look as the brushes usually don’t preserve textures, and you are loosing detail.

Same as in Lightroom, you can make it easier to see the dust spots in your photo. Just add a new curves adjustment layer on top of it, (click on the half white/half black circle button in bottom right under layers and choose curves) and create a very strong curve. To do this, click on the line in the first half and drag up, then click on the line in second half and drag down. You will immediately see the difference. Now just select back the layer with the photo, clean the dust spots and then delete the curves layer, as it’s not needed anymore.

For a little more visual explanation, here is a short video where I’m showing all of this I have described here, and if there are still any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.

You would not believe how many dust spots I had to remove from this photo :) But the reason is simple. My ND filter is in a horrible condition, since my trip to Paris few years ago (not the last one), when while I was moving to a new location, the ND filter got lose from the lens, and feel onto a road. While the glass did not brake, it did get damaged, and can’t really be fully cleaned anymore. But it does work, even if I should think of a replacement soon. And I think I will also do a post about how to remove dust spots in Photoshop, maybe tomorrow :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5, Camera Model: Canon 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 16mm, Aperture: 22, Middle exposure time: 3s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.139609, 17.105068

While walking in the area around the Eiffel tower, I was looking for some interesting view, that I haven’t seen before. And this is what I got. But I don’t think I’m the first one who took a photo like this. The photographers that live in Paris probably already did all the possible ones already :)

This is a 3 shot HDR, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones MkIII Adapter, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 8s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.862606, 2.296905