Recently, I had the fortune of working for some clients who passed on a couple of Photoshop files to me to work on a project for. When I opened the file, it looked presentable as such, but the layering and organization of the layers were nightmarish! Things were everywhere where they shouldn't be and there was no common coherence to grouping even though folders had been set up.
My point here isn't obviously to rant about the previous designers lack of diligence in developing a proper file, but I'd like to take a moment here and talk about how utterly important it is to keep a clean Photoshop file; heck any graphic related program that uses layer techniques should follow this simple rule.
Often, as a graphic designer or illustrator you'll be working with many layers inside any given file; whether it is your own created file or someone else's. So it's really quite important to keep the layering intuitive, and sensible to what you're seeing on the canvas spatially. If particular elements like a navigation bar sit on the same plane on the canvas, they should all be grouped together through either colour coding or even folders (now that Photoshop implements this function). Even if they aren't colour coded or placed inside folders, at the very least put them in the near vacinity of each other.
First and foremost, it'll make your own life easier as a designer/illustrator when you one day have to go back through that file; at least it'll make sense and you just swiftly move through the 1000 layers you built back in 2009. And if you feel generous enough, maybe the file will one day be handled by another designer, at least they won't have to rummage through the superfluous hidden layers and non-hidden layers to find which layer is the one where the downward pointing arrow graphic is that lies on top of a navigation tab.
Just common sense, and no matter how time compressed you are to deliver the files, there's no reason why organization shouldn't be already a part of the workflow.
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