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For convenience sake, the page is already pre-cleaned (redrawn/cropped/rotated)
Make a new adjustment levels layer
This is what the page looks like without level (DUST WISE)
Terrible right? So let's level it now.
You know the drill, new levels adjusment layer, below the DUST CHECK layer
The arrows should NEVER go past the first bump in the level peaks.
Around start/midway of bump is best.
This is what BLACK overlevel looks like. The image is too dark.
Now this is WHITE overlevel. It removes the lighter greys.
Notice how a lot of the pattern is gone? That's bad.
But look at the dust layer, there's NO DUST!
Not much use though if we're losing the tones of the manga. That's part of the art.
So we move the slider further up again to near the middle of the peak.
Looks kinda good now. But we can come back to it later.
The grey slider should always be between 1-0.80. It darkens the greys.
Just a bit of adjusting/checking before dusting here....
You should try and level as much white as you can without destroying the grey tones.
Looks ok, now we dust.
Not much dust this time.....but we'll see....
Hmm okay, not quite right. Let's look at the levels again.
Now there's quite a lot of dust hmm..
Let's see if we can level more to get rid of as much dust as possible.
Manually entering the numbers sometimes works better actually.
White at 247 looks perfect so we'll go with that.
Now we check the dust levels again and remove if necessary (yes in this case)
Fast forwarding the dusting.....to burning now.
Now I mentioned NOT to go over lines with the dodge tool.
This is why.
See how it destroys the whole grey pattern in 1-2 strokes?
It basically brightens the grey so much it turns white.
That's why the exposure is so low and you need to take care when dusting.
Another example of overburning.
This is why we leave the background layer UNTOUCHED. So we can always revert details.
Though well if you don't screw up in the first place, you won't need it. :P
And done! (If you left mistakes, the QC'er will fix it. But try not to though of course! Unless you want to be hated.)