The beauty of layers is that what you do on one layer won’t affect what’s on another layer. So if you ink an area black, redraw a white line on it, and then decide you don’t like the white line, how do you erase the white without erasing the black, too? Well if the white is on a different layer than the black, then the Eraser Tool won’t affect the black.

Also, when precleaning, always make a new layer before applying filters and leveling. That way, if you decide later that you don’t like what you’ve done, you can always start again with the original.

Other things to note about the layer window:

1) You can create folders to organize your layers.

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2) You can change the mode of a layer. Modes affect how the layers interact. In the beginning, don’t worry so much about it, but if you see a tutorial that says “Set Mode to Multiply” or “Set layer to Soft Light,” you’ll know where to look in PS.

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3) You have the option of merging layers together. Unless you need to combine them for the sake of filtering or changing layer modes (both somewhat advanced techniques), I strongly recommend NOT merging layers. If you have too many layers and they’re cluttering your Layer window, make some folders as shown above and dump them in there.

4) Remember, everyone will organize their layers differently, so find a system that works for you!

Here’s a gradient that goes from black to white, and then here’s the same gradient with the Film Grain Filter (settings 8/2/2). See how both the black and white ends are more gray?

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If you want the black side to be black or if you want the white side to be white, I suggest using a Gradient Overlay, which can be found under Blending Options when you right click on the appropriate layer.

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Your Layer Style window will probably look different from mine, but the contents should be similar. For now, let’s focus on Gradient Overlay. These are the default settings:

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Now this is where I throw you a curve ball. We already made our gradient using the Gradient Tool, and we already added a film grain. So why are we adding a Gradient Overlay that obscures the Film Grain? Well we’re actually going to use an OPACITY gradient, not a color gradient.

Click on the drop down menu next to the default gradient to bring up a window with more gradient options. The default gradient is foreground -> background. The one to the right of that is Foreground to Transparent. Choose that one.

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Now double click on the actual gradient (not the arrow for the drop down menu). This lets you modify and customize the gradient.

So let’s start by trying to make the top of our square completely black, and then fading to a light gray at the bottom. As you can see, we’re starting off with the black at the wrong end of the square.

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As the picture states, the top sliders affect opacity and the bottom sliders affect color. We’ll keep color black since we’re trying to make one end of our square black. We have to reverse the opacity sliders, however, and make 0% on the left and 100% on the right. If you click on the top left slider (the black one) you’ll see a number pop up in the Opacity box below. Change it to 0%, and then do the same for the right slider (change that one to 100%).

Now the top edge of the square fades to solid black! You can drag the sliders around and adjust the opacity to tweak the gradient exactly how you want it.

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If you want the bottom to fade to white, just switch the settings around.

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So we have the original black -> white; with film grain; with black -> transparent; with transparent -> white

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After this highly-specific explanation, the more mundane uses of the Gradient Overlay should be apparent ^^

Adjustment Layers can help with two main things when cleaning:

1. Original leveling.
2. Cleaning blacks and whites.

This is because when you use adjustment layers to do leveling, you can change the levels as you work!

The button for adjustment layers is on the bottom of your layers window.

Using adjustment layers for leveling
Click it and go to “levels.”
A normal levels window will appear but instead of just applying the levels to your image, it will create a layer.
In the image, I have the levels layer selected.

Because your levels are on a layer, you can show/hide it like other layers. And now, if you double-click on the layer, you can adjust the levels whenever you need to! It’s extremely convinent to do all leveling in this manner because if you don’t level the page perfectly the first time, you can always go back and edit it.

Using adjustment layers for Blacks/Whites
By using the adjustment layers you can easily max out levels to spot dirt on your page without ruining your original levels.
For example, if you use an adjustment layer to max out blacks, dirt in your whites will show up significantly better.

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And vice-versa for finding white dirt in blacks.

Thanks, ani!!